The woolly mammoth (''Mammuthus primigenius'') is an extinct species of

mammoth A mammoth is any species of the extinct elephantid genus ''Mammuthus.'' They lived from the late Miocene epoch (from around 6.2 million years ago) into the Holocene until about 4,000 years ago, with mammoth species at various times inhabi ...

that lived from the

Middle Pleistocene The Chibanian, more widely known as the Middle Pleistocene (its previous informal name), is an Age (geology), age in the international geologic timescale or a Stage (stratigraphy), stage in chronostratigraphy, being a division of the Pleistocen ...

until its extinction in the

Holocene The Holocene () is the current geologic time scale, geological epoch, beginning approximately 11,700 years ago. It follows the Last Glacial Period, which concluded with the Holocene glacial retreat. The Holocene and the preceding Pleistocene to ...

epoch. It was one of the last in a line of mammoth species, beginning with the African ''

Mammuthus subplanifrons ''Mammuthus subplanifrons'' is the oldest representative of the genus ''Mammuthus'', known from around 6.2-3.75 million years ago during the late Miocene-early Pliocene in what is today South Africa and countries of East Africa, especially Ethiopi ...

'' in the early

Pliocene The Pliocene ( ; also Pleiocene) is the epoch (geology), epoch in the geologic time scale that extends from 5.33 to 2.58steppe mammoth ''Mammuthus trogontherii'', sometimes called the steppe mammoth, is an extinct species of mammoth that ranged over most of northern Eurasia during the Early and Middle Pleistocene, approximately 1.7 million to 200,000 years ago. The evolution o ...

about 800,000 years ago in

Siberia Siberia ( ; , ) is an extensive geographical region comprising all of North Asia, from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. It has formed a part of the sovereign territory of Russia and its predecessor states ...

. Its closest extant relative is the

Asian elephant The Asian elephant (''Elephas maximus''), also known as the Asiatic elephant, is the only living ''Elephas'' species. It is the largest living land animal in Asia and the second largest living Elephantidae, elephantid in the world. It is char ...

. The Columbian mammoth (''Mammuthus columbi'') lived alongside the woolly mammoth in North America, and

DNA studies Deoxyribonucleic acid (; DNA) is a polymer composed of two polynucleotide chains that coil around each other to form a double helix. The polymer carries genetic instructions for the development, functioning, growth and reproduction of al ...

show that the two hybridised with each other. Mammoth remains were long known in Asia before they became known to Europeans. The origin of these remains was long debated and often explained as the remains of

legendary creature A legendary creature is a type of extraordinary or supernatural being that is described in folklore (including myths and legends), and may be featured in historical accounts before modernity, but has not been scientifically shown to exist. In t ...

s. The mammoth was identified as an extinct elephant species by

Georges Cuvier Jean Léopold Nicolas Frédéric, baron Cuvier (23 August 1769 – 13 May 1832), known as Georges Cuvier (; ), was a French natural history, naturalist and zoology, zoologist, sometimes referred to as the "founding father of paleontology". Cuv ...

in 1796. The appearance and behaviour of the woolly mammoth are among the best studied of any

prehistoric Prehistory, also called pre-literary history, is the period of human history between the first known use of stone tools by hominins million years ago and the beginning of recorded history with the invention of writing systems. The use o ...

animal because of the discovery of frozen carcasses in Siberia and

North America North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere, Northern and Western Hemisphere, Western hemispheres. North America is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South Ameri ...

, as well as skeletons, teeth, stomach contents, dung, and depiction from life in prehistoric

cave painting In archaeology, cave paintings are a type of parietal art (which category also includes petroglyphs, or engravings), found on the wall or ceilings of caves. The term usually implies prehistoric art, prehistoric origin. These paintings were often c ...

s. It was roughly the same size as modern

African elephant African elephants are members of the genus ''Loxodonta'' comprising two living elephant species, the African bush elephant (''L. africana'') and the smaller African forest elephant (''L. cyclotis''). Both are social herbivores with grey skin. ...

s. Males reached shoulder heights between and weighed between . Females reached in shoulder heights and weighed between . A newborn calf weighed about . The woolly mammoth was well adapted to the cold environments present during

glacial period A glacial period (alternatively glacial or glaciation) is an interval of time (thousands of years) within an ice age that is marked by colder temperatures and glacier advances. Interglacials, on the other hand, are periods of warmer climate betw ...

s, including the last ice age. It was covered in fur, with an outer covering of long guard hairs and a shorter undercoat. The colour of the

coat A coat is typically an outer garment for the upper body, worn by any gender for warmth or fashion. Coats typically have long sleeves and are open down the front, and closing by means of buttons, zippers, hook-and-loop fasteners (AKA velcro), ...

varied from dark to light. The ears and tail were short to minimise

frostbite Frostbite is a skin injury that occurs when someone is exposed to extremely low temperatures, causing the freezing of the skin or other tissues, commonly affecting the fingers, toes, nose, ears, cheeks and chin areas. Most often, frostbite occ ...

and heat loss. It had long, curved

tusk Tusks are elongated, continuously growing front teeth that protrude well beyond the mouth of certain mammal species. They are most commonly canine tooth, canine teeth, as with Narwhal, narwhals, chevrotains, musk deer, water deer, muntjac, pigs, ...

s and four

molars The molars or molar teeth are large, flat tooth, teeth at the back of the mouth. They are more developed in mammal, mammals. They are used primarily to comminution, grind food during mastication, chewing. The name ''molar'' derives from Latin, '' ...

, which were replaced six times during the lifetime of an individual. Its behaviour was similar to that of modern elephants, and it used its tusks and

trunk Trunk may refer to: Biology * Trunk (anatomy), synonym for torso * Trunk (botany), a tree's central superstructure, and the stem of woody plants * Trunk of corpus callosum, in neuroanatomy * Elephant trunk, the proboscis of an elephant Comput ...

for manipulating objects, fighting, and foraging. The diet of the woolly mammoth was mainly grasses and

sedges The Cyperaceae () are a family of graminoid (grass-like), monocotyledonous flowering plants known as sedges. The family is large; botanists have described some 5,500 known species in about 90 generathe largest being the "true sedges" (genu ...

. Individuals could probably reach the age of 60. Its habitat was the

mammoth steppe The mammoth steppe, also known as steppe-tundra, was once the Earth's most extensive biome. During glacial periods in the later Pleistocene, it stretched east-to-west, from the Iberian Peninsula in the west of Europe, then across Eurasia and thr ...

, which stretched across northern Eurasia and North America. The woolly mammoth coexisted with early humans, who hunted the species for food, and used its bones and tusks for making art, tools, and dwellings. The population of woolly mammoths declined at the end of the Late Pleistocene, with the last populations on mainland Siberia persisting until around 10,000 years ago, although isolated populations survived on St. Paul Island until 5,600 years ago and on

Wrangel Island Wrangel Island (, ; , , ) is an island of the Chukotka Autonomous Okrug, Russia. It is the List of islands by area, 92nd-largest island in the world and roughly the size of Crete. Located in the Arctic Ocean between the Chukchi Sea and East Si ...

until 4,000 years ago. After its extinction, humans continued using its

ivory Ivory is a hard, white material from the tusks (traditionally from elephants) and Tooth, teeth of animals, that consists mainly of dentine, one of the physical structures of teeth and tusks. The chemical structure of the teeth and tusks of mamm ...

as a raw material, a tradition that continues today. The completion of the mammoth genome project in 2015 sparked discussion about potentially reviving the woolly mammoth through several various methods. However, none of these approaches are currently feasible.

Taxonomy

Remains of woolly mammoths were long known by native Siberians and Native Americans, who had various ways of interpreting them. Remains later reached other parts of Asia and Europe, where they were also interpreted in various ways prior to

modern science The history of science covers the development of science from ancient times to the present. It encompasses all three major branches of science: natural, social, and formal. Protoscience, early sciences, and natural philosophies such as al ...

.Lister, 2007. p. 48-55 The first woolly mammoth remains studied by scientists were examined by the British physician

Hans Sloane Sir Hans Sloane, 1st Baronet, (16 April 1660 – 11 January 1753), was an Irish physician, naturalist, and collector. He had a collection of 71,000 items which he bequeathed to the British nation, thus providing the foundation of the British ...

in 1728 and consisted of fossilised teeth and tusks from

. Sloane was the first to recognise that the remains belonged to

elephant Elephants are the largest living land animals. Three living species are currently recognised: the African bush elephant ('' Loxodonta africana''), the African forest elephant (''L. cyclotis''), and the Asian elephant ('' Elephas maximus ...

s. Sloane turned to another biblical explanation for the presence of elephants in the Arctic, asserting that they had been buried during the

Great Flood A flood myth or a deluge myth is a myth in which a great flood, usually sent by a deity or deities, destroys civilization, often in an act of divine retribution. Parallels are often drawn between the flood waters of these myths and the primeva ...

, and that Siberia had previously been tropical before a drastic climate change. Others interpreted Sloane's conclusion slightly differently, arguing the flood had carried elephants from the

tropics The tropics are the regions of Earth surrounding the equator, where the sun may shine directly overhead. This contrasts with the temperate or polar regions of Earth, where the Sun can never be directly overhead. This is because of Earth's ax ...

to the

Arctic The Arctic (; . ) is the polar regions of Earth, polar region of Earth that surrounds the North Pole, lying within the Arctic Circle. The Arctic region, from the IERS Reference Meridian travelling east, consists of parts of northern Norway ( ...

. Sloane's paper was based on travellers' descriptions and a few scattered bones collected in Siberia and Britain. He discussed the question of whether or not the remains were from elephants, but drew no conclusions. In 1738, the German zoologist

Johann Philipp Breyne Johann Philipp Breyne FRS (9 August 1680, Danzig (Gdańsk), Royal Prussia (a fief of the Crown of Poland) – 12 December 1764, Danzig, Royal Prussia), was a German-Polish botanist, palaeontologist, zoologist and entomologist. He is best known ...

argued that mammoth fossils represented some kind of elephant. He could not explain why a tropical animal would be found in such a cold area as Siberia, and suggested that they might have been transported there by the Great Flood. In 1796,

French French may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to France ** French language, which originated in France ** French people, a nation and ethnic group ** French cuisine, cooking traditions and practices Arts and media * The French (band), ...

biologist

was the first to identify the woolly mammoth remains not as modern elephants transported to the Arctic, but as an entirely new species. He argued this species had gone

extinct Extinction is the termination of an organism by the death of its Endling, last member. A taxon may become Functional extinction, functionally extinct before the death of its last member if it loses the capacity to Reproduction, reproduce and ...

and no longer existed, a concept that was not widely accepted at the time. Following Cuvier's identification, the German naturalist

Johann Friedrich Blumenbach Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (11 May 1752 – 22 January 1840) was a German physician, naturalist, physiologist and anthropologist. He is considered to be a main founder of zoology and anthropology as comparative, scientific disciplines. He has be ...

gave the woolly mammoth its scientific name, ''Elephas primigenius'', in 1799, placing it in the same

genus Genus (; : genera ) is a taxonomic rank above species and below family (taxonomy), family as used in the biological classification of extant taxon, living and fossil organisms as well as Virus classification#ICTV classification, viruses. In bino ...

as the

(''Elephas maximus''). This name is Latin for "the first-born elephant". Cuvier coined the name ''Elephas mammonteus'' a few months later, but the former name was subsequently used. In 1828, the British naturalist

Joshua Brookes Joshua Brookes (24 November 1761 – 10 January 1833) was a British anatomist and naturalist. Early life Brookes studied under William Hunter, William Hewson, Andrew Marshall, and John Sheldon, in London. He then attended the practice of A ...

used the name ''Mammuthus borealis'' for woolly mammoth fossils in his collection that he put up for sale, thereby coining a new genus name. Mammuthus primigenius lectotypes

Where and how the word "mammoth" originated is unclear. According to the'' Oxford English Dictionary'', it comes from an old

Vogul The Mansi (Mansi language, Mansi: Мāньси / Мāньси мāхум, ''Māńsi / Māńsi māhum'', ) are an Ob-Ugrians, Ob-Ugric Indigenous people living in Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug, Khanty–Mansia, an Autonomous okrugs of Russia, au ...

word ''mēmoŋt'', "earth-horn". It may be a version of ''mehemot'', the

Arabic Arabic (, , or , ) is a Central Semitic languages, Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigns lang ...

version of the biblical word "behemoth". Another possible origin is

Estonian Estonian may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Estonia, a country in the Baltic region in northern Europe * Estonians, people from Estonia, or of Estonian descent * Estonian language * Estonian cuisine * Estonian culture See also

...

, where ''maa'' means "earth", and ''mutt'' means "

mole Mole (or Molé) may refer to: Animals * Mole (animal) or "true mole" * Golden mole, southern African mammals * Marsupial mole Marsupial moles, the Notoryctidae family, are two species of highly specialized marsupial mammals that are found i ...

". The word was first used in Europe during the early 17th century, when referring to ''maimanto'' tusks discovered in Siberia. The American president

Thomas Jefferson Thomas Jefferson (, 1743July 4, 1826) was an American Founding Fathers of the United States, Founding Father and the third president of the United States from 1801 to 1809. He was the primary author of the United States Declaration of Indepe ...

, who had a keen interest in

palaeontology Paleontology, also spelled as palaeontology or palæontology, is the scientific study of the life of the past, mainly but not exclusively through the study of fossils. Paleontologists use fossils as a means to classify organisms, measure geo ...

, was partially responsible for transforming the word "mammoth" from a noun describing the prehistoric elephant to an adjective describing anything of surprisingly large size. The first recorded use of the word as an adjective was in a description of a wheel of cheese (the "

Cheshire Mammoth Cheese The Cheshire Mammoth Cheese was a gift from the town of Cheshire, Massachusetts, to President Thomas Jefferson in 1802. The cheese was created by combining the milk from every cow in the town, and made in a makeshift cheese press to handle the ...

") given to Jefferson in 1802.Simpson, J. (2009).
Word Stories: Mammoth
." ''Oxford English Dictionary Online'', Oxford University Press. Accessed 5 June 2009. By the early 20th century, the taxonomy of extinct elephants was complex. In 1942, American palaeontologist

Henry Fairfield Osborn Henry Fairfield Osborn, Sr. (August 8, 1857 – November 6, 1935) was an American paleontologist, geologist and eugenics advocate. He was professor of anatomy at Columbia University, president of the American Museum of Natural History for 25 y ...

's posthumous monograph on the

Proboscidea Proboscidea (; , ) is a taxonomic order of afrotherian mammals containing one living family (Elephantidae) and several extinct families. First described by J. Illiger in 1811, it encompasses the elephants and their close relatives. Three l ...

was published, wherein he used various taxon names that had previously been proposed for mammoth species, including replacing ''Mammuthus'' with ''Mammonteus'', as he believed the former name to be invalidly published. Mammoth taxonomy was simplified by various researchers from the 1970s onwards, all species were retained in the genus ''Mammuthus'', and many proposed differences between species were instead interpreted as

intraspecific Biological specificity is the tendency of a characteristic such as a behavior or a biochemical variation to occur in a particular species. Biochemist Linus Pauling stated that "Biological specificity is the set of characteristics of living organism ...

variation. Osborn chose two molars (found in Siberia and Osterode) from Blumenbach's collection at

Göttingen University Göttingen (, ; ; ) is a college town, university city in Lower Saxony, central Germany, the Capital (political), capital of Göttingen (district), the eponymous district. The River Leine runs through it. According to the 2022 German census, t ...

as the

lectotype In biology, a type is a particular specimen (or in some cases a group of specimens) of an organism to which the scientific name of that organism is formally associated. In other words, a type is an example that serves to anchor or centralizes ...

specimens for the woolly mammoth, since

holotype A holotype (Latin: ''holotypus'') is a single physical example (or illustration) of an organism used when the species (or lower-ranked taxon) was formally described. It is either the single such physical example (or illustration) or one of s ...

designation was not practised in Blumenbach's time, and one of the specimens Blumenbach had described had been of the unrelated

straight-tusked elephant The straight-tusked elephant (''Palaeoloxodon antiquus'') is an extinct species of elephant that inhabited Europe and Western Asia during the Middle Pleistocene, Middle and Late Pleistocene. One of the largest known elephant species, mature full ...

(''Palaeoloxodon antiquus''). Soviet palaeontologist

Vera Gromova Vera Isaakovna Gromova (, 8 March 8, 1891 Orenburg – 21 January, 1973) was a Soviet paleontologist known for her studies of fossil ungulates (hoofed mammals). She worked at the Russian Academy of Sciences, where from 1919 to 1942 she was head of ...

further proposed the former should be considered the lectotype with the latter as paralectotype. Both molars were thought lost by the 1980s, and the more complete "Taimyr mammoth" found in Siberia in 1948 was therefore proposed as the

neotype In biology, a type is a particular specimen (or in some cases a group of specimens) of an organism to which the scientific name of that organism is formally associated. In other words, a type is an example that serves to anchor or centralizes ...

specimen in 1990. Resolutions to historical issues about the validity of the genus name ''Mammuthus'' and the

type species In International_Code_of_Zoological_Nomenclature, zoological nomenclature, a type species (''species typica'') is the species name with which the name of a genus or subgenus is considered to be permanently taxonomically associated, i.e., the spe ...

designation of ''E. primigenius'' were also proposed. The paralectotype molar (specimen GZG.V.010.018) has since been located in the Göttingen University collection, identified by comparing it with Osborn's illustration of a cast.

Evolution

The earliest known members of the Proboscidea, the

clade In biology, a clade (), also known as a Monophyly, monophyletic group or natural group, is a group of organisms that is composed of a common ancestor and all of its descendants. Clades are the fundamental unit of cladistics, a modern approach t ...

, which contains modern elephants, existed about 55 million years ago around the

Tethys Sea The Tethys Ocean ( ; ), also called the Tethys Sea or the Neo-Tethys, was a prehistoric ocean during much of the Mesozoic Era and early-mid Cenozoic Era. It was the predecessor to the modern Indian Ocean, the Mediterranean Sea, and the Eurasia ...

. The closest known relatives of the Proboscidea are the

sirenians The Sirenia (), commonly referred to as sea cows or sirenians, are an order (biology), order of fully aquatic, herbivorous mammals that inhabit swamps, rivers, estuaries, marine wetlands, and coastal marine waters. The extant Sirenia comprise tw ...

(dugongs and manatees) and the

hyraxes Hyraxes (), also called dassies, are small, stout, thickset, herbivorous mammals in the family Procaviidae within the order Hyracoidea. Hyraxes are well-furred, rotund animals with short tails. Modern hyraxes are typically between in length a ...

(an order of small, herbivorous mammals). The family

Elephantidae Elephantidae is a family (biology), family of large, herbivorous proboscidean mammals which includes the living Elephant, elephants (belonging to the genera ''Elephas'' and ''Loxodonta''), as well as a number of extinct genera like ''Mammuthus'' ...

existed 6 million years ago in Africa and includes the modern elephants and the mammoths. Among many now-extinct clades, the

mastodon A mastodon, from Ancient Greek μαστός (''mastós''), meaning "breast", and ὀδούς (''odoús'') "tooth", is a member of the genus ''Mammut'' (German for 'mammoth'), which was endemic to North America and lived from the late Miocene to ...

(''Mammut'') is only a distant relative of the mammoths and part of the separate family

Mammutidae Mammutidae is an extinct family of proboscideans belonging to Elephantimorpha. It is best known for the mastodons (genus ''Mammut''), which inhabited North America from the Late Miocene (around 8 million years ago) until their extinction at the ...

, which diverged 25 million years before the mammoths evolved. The Asian elephant is the closest extant relative of the mammoths. The following

cladogram A cladogram (from Greek language, Greek ''clados'' "branch" and ''gramma'' "character") is a diagram used in cladistics to show relations among organisms. A cladogram is not, however, an Phylogenetic tree, evolutionary tree because it does not s ...

shows the placement of the woolly mammoth among Late Pleistocene and modern proboscideans, based on genetic data: Mammoth molars compared

Within six weeks from 2005 to 2006, three teams of researchers independently assembled

mitochondrial genome Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA and mDNA) is the DNA located in the mitochondria organelles in a eukaryotic cell that converts chemical energy from food into adenosine triphosphate (ATP). Mitochondrial DNA is a small portion of the DNA contained in ...

profiles of the woolly mammoth from

ancient DNA Ancient DNA (aDNA) is DNA isolated from ancient sources (typically Biological specimen, specimens, but also environmental DNA). Due to degradation processes (including Crosslinking of DNA, cross-linking, deamination and DNA fragmentation, fragme ...

, which allowed them to confirm the close evolutionary relationship between mammoths and Asian elephants (''Elephas maximus''). A 2015 DNA review confirmed Asian elephants as the closest living relative of the woolly mammoth. African elephants (''Loxodonta africana'') branched away from this clade around 6 million years ago, close to the time of the similar split between

chimpanzee The chimpanzee (; ''Pan troglodytes''), also simply known as the chimp, is a species of Hominidae, great ape native to the forests and savannahs of tropical Africa. It has four confirmed subspecies and a fifth proposed one. When its close rel ...

s and humans. A 2010 study confirmed these relationships and suggested the mammoth and Asian elephant lineages diverged 5.8–7.8 million years ago, while African elephants diverged from an earlier common ancestor 6.6–8.8 million years ago. In 2008, much of the woolly mammoth's

chromosomal A chromosome is a package of DNA containing part or all of the genetic material of an organism. In most chromosomes, the very long thin DNA fibers are coated with nucleosome-forming packaging proteins; in eukaryotic cells, the most importa ...

DNA Deoxyribonucleic acid (; DNA) is a polymer composed of two polynucleotide chains that coil around each other to form a double helix. The polymer carries genetic instructions for the development, functioning, growth and reproduction of al ...

was mapped. The analysis showed that the woolly mammoth and the African elephant are 98.55% to 99.40% identical. The team mapped the woolly mammoth's nuclear genome sequence by extracting DNA from the hair follicles of both a 20,000-year-old mammoth retrieved from

permafrost Permafrost () is soil or underwater sediment which continuously remains below for two years or more; the oldest permafrost has been continuously frozen for around 700,000 years. Whilst the shallowest permafrost has a vertical extent of below ...

and another that died 60,000 years ago. In 2012,

proteins Proteins are large biomolecules and macromolecules that comprise one or more long chains of amino acid residues. Proteins perform a vast array of functions within organisms, including catalysing metabolic reactions, DNA replication, re ...

were confidently identified for the first time, collected from a 43,000-year-old woolly mammoth. Since many remains of each species of mammoth are known from several localities, reconstructing the evolutionary history of the genus through morphological studies is possible. Mammoth species can be identified from the number of enamel ridges (or lamellar plates) on their

; primitive species had few ridges, and the number increased gradually as new species evolved to feed on more abrasive food items. The crowns of the teeth became deeper in height and the skulls became taller to accommodate this. At the same time, the skulls became shorter from front to back to minimise the weight of the head. The short and tall skulls of woolly and Columbian mammoths (''Mammuthus columbi'') were the culmination of this process. The first known members of the genus ''Mammuthus'' are the African species ''

'' from the

Pliocene The Pliocene ( ; also Pleiocene) is the epoch (geology), epoch in the geologic time scale that extends from 5.33 to 2.58M. africanavus'' from the

Pleistocene The Pleistocene ( ; referred to colloquially as the ''ice age, Ice Age'') is the geological epoch (geology), epoch that lasted from to 11,700 years ago, spanning the Earth's most recent period of repeated glaciations. Before a change was fin ...

. The former is thought to be the ancestor of later forms. Mammoths entered Europe around 3 million years ago. The earliest European mammoth has been named '' M. rumanus''; it spread across Europe and China. Only its molars are known, which show that it had 8–10 enamel ridges. A population evolved 12–14 ridges, splitting off from and replacing the earlier type, becoming the southern mammoth (''M. meridionalis'') about 2–1.7 million years ago. In turn, this species was replaced by the

steppe mammoth ''Mammuthus trogontherii'', sometimes called the steppe mammoth, is an extinct species of mammoth that ranged over most of northern Eurasia during the Early and Middle Pleistocene, approximately 1.7 million to 200,000 years ago. The evolution o ...

(''M. trogontherii'') with 18–20 ridges, which evolved in eastern Asia around 1 million years ago. Mammoths derived from ''M. trogontherii'' evolved molars with 26 ridges 400,000 years ago in Siberia and became the woolly mammoth. The earliest identified forms of woolly mammoth date to the

. Woolly mammoths entered North America about 100,000 years ago by crossing the

Bering Strait The Bering Strait ( , ; ) is a strait between the Pacific and Arctic oceans, separating the Chukchi Peninsula of the Russian Far East from the Seward Peninsula of Alaska. The present Russia–United States maritime boundary is at 168° 58' ...

.Lister, 2007. pp. 12–43

Subspecies and hybridisation

Individuals and populations showing transitional morphologies between each of the mammoth species are known, and primitive and derived species coexisted until the former disappeared. The different species and their intermediate forms have been termed "

chronospecies A chronospecies is a species derived from a sequential development pattern that involves continual and uniform changes from an extinct ancestral form on an evolutionary scale. The sequence of alterations eventually produces a population that is p ...

". Many taxa intermediate between ''M. primigenius'' and other mammoths have been proposed, but their validity is uncertain; depending on author, they are either considered primitive forms of an advanced species or advanced forms of a primitive species. Distinguishing and determining these intermediate forms has been called one of the most long-lasting and complicated problems in

Quaternary The Quaternary ( ) is the current and most recent of the three periods of the Cenozoic Era in the geologic time scale of the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS), as well as the current and most recent of the twelve periods of the ...

palaeontology. Regional and intermediate species and subspecies such as ''M. intermedius'', ''M. chosaricus'', ''M. p. primigenius'', ''M. p. jatzkovi'', ''M. p. sibiricus'', ''M. p. fraasi'', ''M. p. leith-adamsi'', ''M. p. hydruntinus'', ''M. p. astensis'', ''M. p. americanus'', ''M. p. compressus'', and ''M. p. alaskensis'' have been proposed. A 2011 genetic study showed that two examined specimens of the Columbian mammoth were grouped within a subclade of woolly mammoths. This suggests that the two populations interbred and produced fertile offspring. A North American type formerly referred to as ''M. jeffersonii'' may be a

hybrid Hybrid may refer to: Science * Hybrid (biology), an offspring resulting from cross-breeding ** Hybrid grape, grape varieties produced by cross-breeding two ''Vitis'' species ** Hybridity, the property of a hybrid plant which is a union of two diff ...

between the two species. A 2015 study suggested that the animals in the range where ''M. columbi'' and ''M. primigenius'' overlapped formed a

metapopulation A metapopulation consists of a group of spatially separated populations of the same species which interact at some level. The term metapopulation was coined by Richard Levins in 1969 to describe a model of population dynamics of insect pests in a ...

of hybrids with varying morphology. It suggested that Eurasian ''M. primigenius'' had a similar relationship with ''M. trogontherii'' in areas where their range overlapped. According to a 2025 study of mammoth teeth from

Alberta, Canada Alberta is a Provinces and territories of Canada, province in Canada. It is a part of Western Canada and is one of the three Canadian Prairies, prairie provinces. Alberta is bordered by British Columbia to its west, Saskatchewan to its east, t ...

, this area was a zone of

sympatry In biology, two closely related species or populations are considered sympatric when they exist in the same geographic area and thus frequently encounter each other. An initially interbreeding population that splits into two or more distinct spe ...

and hybridisation between woolly and Columbian mammoths. In 2021, DNA older than a million years was sequenced for the first time, from two mammoth teeth of

Early Pleistocene The Early Pleistocene is an unofficial epoch (geology), sub-epoch in the international geologic timescale in chronostratigraphy, representing the earliest division of the Pleistocene Epoch within the ongoing Quaternary Period. It is currently esti ...

age found in eastern Siberia. One tooth from

Adycha The Adycha (; ) is a river in the Republic of Sakha in Russia. It is a right hand tributary of the Yana, and is long, with a drainage basin of . At the end of the Soviet period, a big dam with a hydroelectric station was planned to be built on ...

(1–1.3 million years old) belonged to a lineage that was ancestral to later woolly mammoths, whereas the other from

Krestovka Krestovka () is a rural locality (a village) in Rostilovskoye Rural Settlement, Gryazovetsky District, Vologda Oblast, Russia. The population was 35 as of 2002. Geography Krestovka is located 4 km south of Gryazovets Gryazovets () is a town ...

(1.1–1.65 million years old) belonged to new lineage. The study found that half of the ancestry of Columbian mammoths came from relatives of the Krestovka lineage (which probably represented the first mammoths that colonised the Americas) and the other half from the lineage of woolly mammoths, with the hybridisation happening more than 420,000 years ago, during the

. Later woolly and Columbian mammoths also interbred occasionally, and mammoth species may have hybridised routinely when brought together by glacial expansion. These findings were the first evidence of

hybrid speciation Hybrid speciation is a form of speciation where hybridization between two different species leads to a new species, reproductively isolated from the parent species. Previously, reproductive isolation between two species and their parents was tho ...

from ancient DNA. The study also found that genetic adaptations to cold environments, such as hair growth and fat deposits, were already present in the steppe mammoth lineage and were not unique to woolly mammoths.

Description

The appearance of the woolly mammoth is probably the best known of any prehistoric animal due to the many frozen specimens with preserved soft tissue and depictions by contemporary humans in their art. The average shoulder height for males of the species has been estimated at with a weight of , with females being smaller like living elephants, with a shoulder height of and a weight of . This size is comparable to the largest living elephant species, the

African bush elephant The African bush elephant (''Loxodonta africana''), also known as the African savanna elephant, is a species of elephant native to sub-Saharan Africa. It is one of three extant elephant species and, along with the African forest elephant, one ...

(''Loxodonta africana''), but is considerably smaller than the earlier ''Mammuthus meridionalis'' and ''Mammuthus trogontherii'' and the contemporary ''Mammuthus columbi''. The woolly mammoth exhibited size variation throughout its range, with individuals from Western Europe being considerably larger (with adult males estimated to be on average tall and in weight) than those found in Siberia (with adult males of this population being estimated on average tall and in weight). One of the largest recorded woolly mammoths is the Siegsdorf specimen from Germany, with an estimated shoulder height of and an estimated body mass of . A newborn calf would have weighed about . Woolly mammoth size comparison

Few frozen specimens have preserved genitals, so the sex is usually determined through examination of the skeleton. The best indication of sex is the size of the

pelvic The pelvis (: pelves or pelvises) is the lower part of an anatomical trunk, between the abdomen and the thighs (sometimes also called pelvic region), together with its embedded skeleton (sometimes also called bony pelvis or pelvic skeleton). ...

girdle, since the opening that functions as the birth canal is always wider in females than in males. Though the mammoths on Wrangel Island were smaller than those of the mainland, their size varied, and they were not small enough to be considered " island dwarfs". The last woolly mammoth populations are claimed to have decreased in size and increased their

sexual dimorphism Sexual dimorphism is the condition where sexes of the same species exhibit different Morphology (biology), morphological characteristics, including characteristics not directly involved in reproduction. The condition occurs in most dioecy, di ...

, but this was dismissed in a 2012 study. Woolly mammoth model Royal BC Museum in Victoria

Woolly mammoths had several adaptations to the cold, most noticeably the layer of fur covering all parts of their bodies. Other adaptations to cold weather include ears that are far smaller than those of modern elephants; they were about long and across, and the ear of the 6- to 12-month-old frozen calf "Dima" was under long. The small ears reduced heat loss and

, and the tail was short for the same reason, only long in the "Berezovka mammoth". The tail contained 21 vertebrae, whereas the tails of modern elephants contain 28–33. Their skin was no thicker than that of present-day elephants, between . They had a layer of fat up to thick under the skin, which helped to keep them warm. Woolly mammoths had broad flaps of skin under their tails which covered the

anus In mammals, invertebrates and most fish, the anus (: anuses or ani; from Latin, 'ring' or 'circle') is the external body orifice at the ''exit'' end of the digestive tract (bowel), i.e. the opposite end from the mouth. Its function is to facil ...

; this is also seen in modern elephants.Lister, 2007. pp. 82–87 Other characteristic features depicted in

s include a large, high, single-domed head and a sloping back with a high shoulder hump; this shape resulted from the

spinous process Each vertebra (: vertebrae) is an irregular bone with a complex structure composed of bone and some hyaline cartilage, that make up the vertebral column or spine, of vertebrates. The proportions of the vertebrae differ according to their spina ...

es of the back vertebrae decreasing in length from front to rear. These features were not present in juveniles, which had convex backs like Asian elephants. Another feature shown in cave paintings was confirmed by the discovery of a frozen specimen in 1924, an adult nicknamed the "Middle Kolyma mammoth", which was preserved with a complete trunk tip. Unlike the trunk lobes of modern elephants, the upper "finger" at the tip of the trunk had a long pointed lobe and was long, while the lower "thumb" was and was broader. The trunk of "Dima" was long, whereas the trunk of the adult "Liakhov mammoth" was long. The well-preserved trunk of a juvenile specimen nicknamed "

Yuka Yuka may refer to: *Yuka (music), an Afro-Cuban style of music *Yuka (mammoth), mammoth specimen found in Yakutia, Russia *Manshu Yuka Kogyo K.K. Ssuningkai, a Japanese-German pre-WWII industrial co-operation People *Yuka (name), a Japanese pers ...

" was described in 2015, and it was shown to possess a fleshy expansion a third above the tip. Rather than oval as the rest of the trunk, this part was ellipsoidal in cross section, and double the size in diameter. The feature was shown to be present in two other specimens, of different sexes and ages.

Coat

The

consisted of an outer layer of long, coarse "guard hair", which was on the upper part of the body, up to in length on the flanks and underside, and in diameter, and a denser inner layer of shorter, slightly curly under-wool, up to long and in diameter. The hairs on the upper leg were up to long, and those of the feet were long, reaching the toes. The hairs on the head were relatively short, but longer on the underside and the sides of the trunk. The tail was extended by coarse hairs up to long, which were thicker than the guard hairs. The woolly mammoth likely moulted seasonally, and the heaviest fur was shed during spring.Lister, 2007. pp. 83–84 Since mammoth carcasses were more likely to be preserved, possibly only the winter coat has been preserved in frozen specimens. Modern elephants have much less hair, though juveniles have a more extensive covering of hair than adults. This is thought to be for

thermoregulation Thermoregulation is the ability of an organism to keep its body temperature within certain boundaries, even when the surrounding temperature is very different. A thermoconforming organism, by contrast, simply adopts the surrounding temperature ...

, helping them lose heat in their hot environments. Comparison between the over-hairs of woolly mammoths and extant elephants show that they did not differ much in overall morphology. Woolly mammoths had numerous

sebaceous gland A sebaceous gland or oil gland is a microscopic exocrine gland in the skin that opens into a hair follicle to secrete an oily or waxy matter, called sebum, which lubricates the hair and skin of mammals. In humans, sebaceous glands occur in ...

s in their skin, which secreted oils into their hair; this would have improved the wool's insulation, repelled water, and given the fur a glossy sheen. Preserved woolly mammoth fur is orange-brown, but this is believed to be an artefact from the bleaching of pigment during burial. The amount of

pigment A pigment is a powder used to add or alter color or change visual appearance. Pigments are completely or nearly solubility, insoluble and reactivity (chemistry), chemically unreactive in water or another medium; in contrast, dyes are colored sub ...

ation varied from hair to hair and within each hair. A 2006 study sequenced the ''Mc1r'' gene (which influences hair colour in mammals) from woolly mammoth bones. Two

allele An allele is a variant of the sequence of nucleotides at a particular location, or Locus (genetics), locus, on a DNA molecule. Alleles can differ at a single position through Single-nucleotide polymorphism, single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP), ...

s were found: a dominant (fully active) and a

recessive In genetics, dominance is the phenomenon of one variant (allele) of a gene on a chromosome masking or overriding the effect of a different variant of the same gene on the other copy of the chromosome. The first variant is termed dominant and ...

(partially active) one. In mammals, recessive'' Mc1r'' alleles result in light hair. Mammoths born with at least one copy of the dominant allele would have had dark coats, while those with two copies of the recessive allele would have had light coats. A 2011 study showed that light individuals would have been rare. A 2014 study instead indicated that the colouration of an individual varied from nonpigmented on the overhairs, bicoloured, nonpigmented and mixed red-brown guard hairs, and nonpigmented underhairs, which would give a light overall appearance.

Dentition

Woolly mammoth with downward spiralling tusk

Woolly mammoths had very long tusks (modified

incisor Incisors (from Latin ''incidere'', "to cut") are the front teeth present in most mammals. They are located in the premaxilla above and on the mandible below. Humans have a total of eight (two on each side, top and bottom). Opossums have 18, wher ...

teeth), which were more curved than those of modern elephants. The longest known male tusk is long (measured along the outside curve) and weighs , with a historical report of a long tusk found in Siberia, while the heaviest tusk is , suggested to have been when complete; and was a more typical size. Female tusks were smaller and thinner, and weighing . For comparison, the record for longest tusks of the

is . The sheaths of the tusks were parallel and spaced closely. About a quarter of the length was inside the sockets. The tusks grew spirally in opposite directions from the base and continued in a curve until the tips pointed towards each other, sometimes crossing. In this way, most of the weight would have been close to the skull, and less

torque In physics and mechanics, torque is the rotational analogue of linear force. It is also referred to as the moment of force (also abbreviated to moment). The symbol for torque is typically \boldsymbol\tau, the lowercase Greek letter ''tau''. Wh ...

would occur than with straight tusks.Lister, 2007. pp. 94–95 The tusks were usually asymmetrical and showed considerable variation, with some tusks curving down instead of outwards and some being shorter due to breakage. Calves developed small milk tusks a few centimetres long at six months old, which were replaced by permanent tusks a year later. Tusk growth continued throughout life, but became slower as the animal reached adulthood. The tusks grew by each year. Some cave paintings show woolly mammoths with small or no tusks, but whether this reflected reality or was artistic license is unknown. Female Asian elephants have no tusks, but no fossil evidence indicates that any adult woolly mammoths lacked them. Molaire de mammouth - font de Champdamoy

Molaire de mammouth - font de Champdamoy

Woolly mammoths had four functional molar teeth at a time—two in the upper jaw and two in the lower. About of the crown was within the jaw, and was above. The crown was continually pushed forwards and up as it wore down, comparable to a

conveyor belt A conveyor belt is the carrying medium of a belt conveyor system (often shortened to a belt conveyor). A belt conveyor system consists of two or more pulleys (sometimes referred to as drums), with a closed loop of carrying medium—the conveyor b ...

. The teeth had up to 26 separated ridges of enamel, which were themselves covered in "prisms" that were directed towards the chewing surface. These were quite wear-resistant and kept together by

cementum Cementum is a specialized calcified substance covering the root of a tooth. The cementum is the part of the periodontium that attaches the teeth to the alveolar bone by anchoring the periodontal ligament. Structure The cells of cementum are ...

and

dentine Dentin ( ) (American English) or dentine ( or ) (British English) () is a calcified tissue of the body and, along with enamel, cementum, and pulp, is one of the four major components of teeth. It is usually covered by enamel on the crown ...

. A mammoth had six sets of molars throughout a lifetime, which were replaced five times, though a few specimens with a seventh set are known. The latter condition could extend the lifespan of the individual, unless the tooth consisted of only a few plates. The first molars were about the size of those of a human, , the third were long, and the sixth were about long and weighed . The molars grew larger and contained more ridges with each replacement. The woolly mammoth is considered to have had the most complex molars of any elephant.

Palaeobiology

Adult woolly mammoths could effectively defend themselves from predators with their tusks, trunks, and size; however, juveniles and weakened adults were vulnerable to pack hunters such as

wolves The wolf (''Canis lupus''; : wolves), also known as the grey wolf or gray wolf, is a canine native to Eurasia and North America. More than thirty subspecies of ''Canis lupus'' have been recognized, including the dog and dingo, though gr ...

, cave hyenas, and large

felines Feline may refer to: Zoology * Loosely, Felidae, a member of the cat family, which includes the subfamilies Pantherinae and Felinae (conventionally designated a felid). ** Following the taxonomic convention, Felinae, the subfamily of Felidae that ...

. The tusks may have been used in intraspecies fighting, such as fights over

territory A territory is an area of land, sea, or space, belonging or connected to a particular country, person, or animal. In international politics, a territory is usually a geographic area which has not been granted the powers of self-government, ...

or mates. Display of the large tusks of males could have been used to attract females and intimidate rivals. Because of their curvature, the tusks were unsuitable for stabbing but may have been used for hitting, as indicated by injuries to some fossil shoulder blades. The very long hairs on the tail probably compensated for the shortness of the tail, enabling its use as a

flyswatter A fly-killing device is used for pest control of flying insects, such as houseflies, wasps, moths, gnats, and mosquitoes. Flyswatter A flyswatter (or fly-swat, fly swatter) usually consists of a small rectangular or round sheet of a lightweig ...

, similar to the tail on modern elephants. As in modern elephants, the sensitive and muscular trunk worked as a limb-like organ with many functions. It was used for manipulating objects and in social interactions. The well-preserved foot of the adult male "

Yukagir mammoth The Yukagir Mammoth is a frozen adult male woolly mammoth specimen found in the autumn of 2002 in northern Yakutia, Arctic Siberia, Russia, and is considered to be an exceptional discovery. The nickname refers to the Siberian village near where i ...

" shows that the soles of the feet contained many cracks that would have helped in gripping surfaces during locomotion. Like modern elephants, woolly mammoths walked on their toes and had large, fleshy pads behind the toes. Like modern elephants, woolly mammoths were likely very social and lived in

matriarchal Matriarchy is a social system in which positions of power and privilege are held by women. In a broader sense it can also extend to moral authority, social privilege, and control of property. While those definitions apply in general English, ...

(female-led) family groups. This is supported by fossil assemblages and cave paintings showing groups, implying that most of their other social behaviours were likely similar to those of modern elephants. How many mammoths lived at one location at a time is unknown, as fossil deposits are often accumulations of individuals who died over long periods of time. The numbers likely varied by season and lifecycle events. Modern elephants can form large herds, sometimes consisting of multiple family groups, which can include thousands of animals migrating together. Mammoths may have formed large herds more often since animals that live in open areas are more likely to do this than those in forested areas. Trackways made by a woolly mammoth herd 11,300–11,000 years ago have been found in the St. Mary Reservoir in Canada, showing that in this case, almost equal numbers of adults, subadults, and juveniles were found. The adults had a stride of , and the juveniles ran to keep up. Woolly mammoth dental enamel from Poland has demonstrated that woolly mammoths were seasonally migratory. Recurring shifts in δ¹⁸O and ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr found in layers of the enamel correspond to seasonal variations and indicate that Polish woolly mammoths inhabited southern Poland during winter but grazed the Polish midlands during summer.

Adaptations to cold

The woolly mammoth was probably the most specialised member of the family Elephantidae. In addition to their fur, they had lipoplexes (fat storage) in their neck and

withers Withers are the ridge between the shoulder blades of an animal, typically a quadruped. In many species, this ridge is the tallest point of the body. In horses and dogs, it is the standard place to measure the animal's height. In contrast, catt ...

for times when food availability was insufficient during winter, and their first three molars grew more quickly than in the calves of modern elephants. The expansion identified on the trunk of "Yuka" and other specimens was suggested to function as a "fur mitten"; the trunk tip was not covered in fur but was used for foraging during winter and could have been heated by curling it into the expansion. The expansion could be used to melt snow if a shortage of water to drink existed, as melting it directly inside the mouth could disturb the thermal balance of the animal. As in

reindeer The reindeer or caribou (''Rangifer tarandus'') is a species of deer with circumpolar distribution, native to Arctic, subarctic, tundra, taiga, boreal, and mountainous regions of Northern Europe, Siberia, and North America. It is the only re ...

and

musk oxen The muskox (''Ovibos moschatus'') is a hoofed mammal of the family Bovidae. Native to the Arctic, it is noted for its thick coat and for the strong odor emitted by males during the seasonal rut, from which its name derives. This musky odor has ...

, the

haemoglobin Hemoglobin (haemoglobin, Hb or Hgb) is a protein containing iron that facilitates the transportation of oxygen in red blood cells. Almost all vertebrates contain hemoglobin, with the sole exception of the fish family Channichthyidae. Hemoglobi ...

of the woolly mammoth was adapted to the cold, with three mutations to improve oxygen delivery around the body and prevent freezing. This feature may have helped the mammoths to live at high latitudes. In a 2015 study, high-quality

genome A genome is all the genetic information of an organism. It consists of nucleotide sequences of DNA (or RNA in RNA viruses). The nuclear genome includes protein-coding genes and non-coding genes, other functional regions of the genome such as ...

sequences from three Asian elephants and two woolly mammoths were compared. About 1.4 million DNA nucleotide differences were found between mammoths and elephants, which affect the sequence of more than 1,600 proteins. Differences were noted in genes for a number of aspects of physiology and biology that would be relevant to Arctic survival, including the development of skin and hair, storage and metabolism of adipose tissue, and perceiving temperature. Genes related to both sensing temperature and transmitting that sensation to the brain were altered. One of the heat-sensing genes encodes a protein, TRPV3, found in the skin, which affects hair growth. When inserted into human cells, the mammoth's version of the protein was found to be less sensitive to heat than the elephant's. This is consistent with a previous observation that mice lacking active TRPV3 are likely to spend more time in cooler cage locations than wild-type mice and have wavier hair. Several alterations in circadian clock genes were found, perhaps needed to cope with the extreme polar variation in the length of daylight. Similar mutations are known in other Arctic mammals, such as reindeer. A 2019 study of the woolly mammoth

mitogenome Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA and mDNA) is the DNA located in the mitochondria organelles in a eukaryotic cell that converts chemical energy from food into adenosine triphosphate (ATP). Mitochondrial DNA is a small portion of the DNA contained in ...

suggests that these had metabolic adaptations related to extreme environments. A genetic study from 2023 found that the woolly mammoth had already acquired a broad range of genes associated with the development of skin and hair, fat storage, metabolism, and the immune system by the time the species appeared and that these continued to evolve within the last 700,000 years, including a gene that resulted in mammoths of the Late Quaternary having small ears.

Diet

Food at various stages of digestion has been found in the intestines of several woolly mammoths, giving a good picture of their diet. Woolly mammoths sustained themselves on plant food, mainly grasses and sedges, which were supplemented with

herbaceous plant Herbaceous plants are vascular plants that have no persistent woody stems above ground. This broad category of plants includes many perennials, and nearly all annuals and biennials. Definitions of "herb" and "herbaceous" The fourth edition o ...

flowering plant Flowering plants are plants that bear flowers and fruits, and form the clade Angiospermae (). The term angiosperm is derived from the Ancient Greek, Greek words (; 'container, vessel') and (; 'seed'), meaning that the seeds are enclosed with ...

shrub A shrub or bush is a small to medium-sized perennial woody plant. Unlike herbaceous plants, shrubs have persistent woody stems above the ground. Shrubs can be either deciduous or evergreen. They are distinguished from trees by their multiple ...

moss Mosses are small, non-vascular plant, non-vascular flowerless plants in the taxonomic phylum, division Bryophyta (, ) ''sensu stricto''. Bryophyta (''sensu lato'', Wilhelm Philippe Schimper, Schimp. 1879) may also refer to the parent group bryo ...

es, and tree matter. The composition and exact varieties differed from location to location. Woolly mammoths needed a varied diet to support their growth, similar to modern elephants. An adult of 6 tonnes would need to eat daily and may have foraged as long as 20 hours every day. The two-fingered tip of the trunk was probably adapted for picking up the short grasses of the last

ice age An ice age is a long period of reduction in the temperature of Earth's surface and atmosphere, resulting in the presence or expansion of continental and polar ice sheets and alpine glaciers. Earth's climate alternates between ice ages, and g ...

(

Quaternary glaciation The Quaternary glaciation, also known as the Pleistocene glaciation, is an alternating series of glacial period, glacial and interglacial, interglacial periods during the Quaternary period that began 2.58 Year#SI prefix multipliers, Ma (million ...

, 2.58 million years ago to present) by wrapping around them. In contrast, modern elephants curl their trunks around the longer grass of their tropical environments. The trunk could be used for pulling off large grass tufts, delicately picking

bud In botany, a bud is an undeveloped or Plant embryogenesis, embryonic Shoot (botany), shoot and normally occurs in the axil of a leaf or at the tip of a Plant stem, stem. Once formed, a bud may remain for some time in a dormancy, dormant conditi ...

s and flowers, and tearing off leaves and branches where trees and shrubs were present. The "Yukagir mammoth" had ingested plant matter that contained spores of dung fungus.

Isotope analysis Isotope analysis is the identification of isotopic signature, abundance of certain stable isotopes of chemical elements within organic and inorganic compounds. Isotopic analysis can be used to understand the flow of energy through a food we ...

shows that woolly mammoths fed mainly on

C3 plants carbon fixation is the most common of three metabolic pathways for carbon fixation in photosynthesis, the other two being and CAM. This process converts carbon dioxide and ribulose bisphosphate (RuBP, a 5-carbon sugar) into two molecules of ...

, unlike horses and rhinos. Scientists identified milk in the stomach and faecal matter in the intestines of the mammoth calf "

Lyuba Lyuba may refer to: * Lyuba (given name), a Slavic male or female given name cognate to Ljuba or Luba or Lyubov * Lyuba (mammoth), a female mammoth calf * Lyuba (crater), a crater on Venus {{disambig, given name ...

". The faecal matter may have been eaten by "Lyuba" to promote development of the intestinal microbes necessary for digestion of vegetation, as is the case in modern elephants. An isotope analysis of woolly mammoths from Yukon showed that the young nursed for at least 3 years and were

weaned Weaning is the process of gradually introducing an infant human or other mammal to what will be its adult diet while withdrawing the supply of its mother's milk. In the UK, weaning primarily refers to the introduction of solid foods at 6 mont ...

and gradually changed to a diet of plants when they were 2–3 years old. This is later than in modern elephants and may be due to a higher risk of predator attack or difficulty obtaining food during the long winter darkness at high latitudes. Worn Woolly mammoth tusk

The molars were adapted to their diet of coarse tundra grasses, with more enamel plates and a higher crown than their earlier southern relatives. The woolly mammoth chewed its food using its powerful jaw muscles to move the mandible forwards and close the mouth, then backward while opening; the sharp enamel ridges cut across each other, grinding the food. The ridges were wear-resistant, enabling the animal to chew large quantities of food, often containing grit. Woolly mammoths may have used their tusks as shovels to clear snow from the ground, reach the vegetation buried below, and break ice to drink. This is indicated on many preserved tusks by flat, polished sections up to long, as well as scratches on the part of the surface that would have reached the ground (especially at their outer curvature). The tusks were used for obtaining food in other ways, such as digging up plants and stripping off bark.

Life history

Cross sections of African elephant and woolly mammoth tusks

The lifespan of mammals is related to their size. Since modern elephants can reach the age of 60 years, the same is thought to be true for woolly mammoths, which were of a similar size. The age of a mammoth can be roughly determined by counting the

growth rings Dendrochronology (or tree-ring dating) is the scientific method of chronological dating, dating tree rings (also called growth rings) to the exact year they were formed in a tree. As well as dating them, this can give data for dendroclimatology, ...

of its tusks when viewed in cross-section, but this does not account for its early years, as these are represented by the tips of the tusks, which are usually worn away. In the remaining part of the tusk, each major line represents a year, and weekly and daily ones can be found in between. Dark bands correspond to summers, so determining the season in which a mammoth died is possible. The growth of the tusks slowed when foraging became harder, for example, during winter, during disease, or when a male was banished from the herd (male elephants live with their herds until about the age of 10). Mammoth tusks dating to the harshest period of the last glaciation 25–20,000 years ago show slower growth rates.Lister, 2007. pp. 83–107. Woolly mammoths continued growing past adulthood, like other elephants. Unfused limb bones show that males grew until they reached the age of 40, and females grew until they were 25. The frozen calf "Dima" was tall when it died at the age of 6–12 months. At this age, the second set of molars would erupt, and the first set would be worn out at 18 months of age. The third set of molars lasted for 10 years, and this process was repeated until the final, sixth set emerged when the animal was 30 years old. When the last set of molars was worn out, the animal would be unable to chew and feed, and it would die of starvation. A study of North American mammoths found that they often died during winter or spring, the hardest times for northern animals to survive. Examination of preserved calves shows that they were all born during spring and summer, and since modern elephants have gestation periods of 21–22 months, the

mating season Seasonal breeders are animal species that successfully mate only during certain times of the year. These times of year allow for the optimization of survival of young due to factors such as ambient temperature, food and water availability, and ch ...

probably was from summer to autumn.

δ15N In geochemistry, hydrology, paleoclimatology and paleoceanography, ''δ''15N (pronounced "delta fifteen n") or delta-N-15 is a measure of the ratio of the two stable isotopes of nitrogen, 15N: 14N. Formulas Two very similar expressions for a ...

isotopic analysis of the teeth of "Lyuba" has demonstrated their

prenatal development Prenatal development () involves the development of the embryo and of the fetus during a viviparous animal's gestation. Prenatal development starts with fertilization, in the germinal stage of embryonic development, and continues in fetal de ...

and indicates its gestation period was similar to that of a modern elephant and that it was born in spring. The best-preserved head of a frozen adult specimen, that of a male nicknamed the "Yukagir mammoth", shows that woolly mammoths had temporal glands between the ear and the eye. This feature indicates that, like bull elephants, male woolly mammoths entered "

musth Musth or must (from Persian, ) is a periodic condition in bull (male) elephants characterized by aggressive behavior in animals, aggressive behavior and accompanied by a large rise in reproductive hormones. It has been known in Asian elephan ...

", a period of heightened aggressiveness. The glands are used especially by males to produce an oily substance with a strong smell called

temporin In elephants, temporin is the visible liquid secreted by temporal glands. It contains proteins, lipids (notably cholesterol), phenols, cresols and sesquiterpenes (notably farnesol and its derivatives). Temporin has a communicative function amon ...

. Their fur may have helped spread the scent further. This was confirmed by a 2023 study that compared the

testosterone Testosterone is the primary male sex hormone and androgen in Male, males. In humans, testosterone plays a key role in the development of Male reproductive system, male reproductive tissues such as testicles and prostate, as well as promoting se ...

level in the dentine of an adult African elephant tusk with that of a male woolly mammoth.

Palaeopathology

Evidence of several different

bone disease Bone disease refers to the medical conditions which affect the bone. Terminology A bone disease is also called an "osteopathy", but because the term osteopathy is often used to refer to an alternative health-care philosophy, use of the term can ...

s has been found in woolly mammoths. The most common of these was

osteoarthritis Osteoarthritis is a type of degenerative joint disease that results from breakdown of articular cartilage, joint cartilage and underlying bone. A form of arthritis, it is believed to be the fourth leading cause of disability in the world, affect ...

, found in 2% of specimens. One specimen from Switzerland had several fused

vertebra Each vertebra (: vertebrae) is an irregular bone with a complex structure composed of bone and some hyaline cartilage, that make up the vertebral column or spine, of vertebrates. The proportions of the vertebrae differ according to their spina ...

e due to this condition. The "Yukagir mammoth" had suffered from

spondylitis Spondylitis is an inflammation of the vertebrae. It is a form of spondylopathy. In many cases, spondylitis involves one or more vertebral joints, as well, which itself is called spondylarthritis. __TOC__ Types Pott disease is a tuberculous d ...

in two vertebrae, and

osteomyelitis Osteomyelitis (OM) is the infectious inflammation of bone marrow. Symptoms may include pain in a specific bone with overlying redness, fever, and weakness. The feet, spine, and hips are the most commonly involved bones in adults. The cause is ...

is known from some specimens. Several specimens have healed

bone fracture A bone fracture (abbreviated FRX or Fx, Fx, or #) is a medical condition in which there is a partial or complete break in the continuity of any bone in the body. In more severe cases, the bone may be broken into several fragments, known as a ''c ...

s, showing that the animals had survived these injuries. Likewise,

spondyloarthropathy Spondyloarthritis (SpA), also known as spondyloarthropathy, is a collection of syndromes connected by genetic predisposition and clinical symptoms. The best-known subtypes are enteropathic arthritis (EA), psoriatic arthritis (PsA), ankylosing ...

has also been identified in woolly mammoth remains. An extra number of cervical vertebrae has been found in 33% of specimens from the North Sea region, probably due to a drop in numbers and subsequent inbreeding. Vertebral lesions in woolly mammoths have been speculated to have resulted from nutritional stress. Woolly mammoth ribs have also been shown to contain pathologies, including healed fractures and

osteoporosis Osteoporosis is a systemic skeletal disorder characterized by low bone mass, micro-architectural deterioration of bone tissue leading to more porous bone, and consequent increase in Bone fracture, fracture risk. It is the most common reason f ...

Parasitic Parasitism is a close relationship between species, where one organism, the parasite, lives (at least some of the time) on or inside another organism, the host, causing it some harm, and is adapted structurally to this way of life. The ent ...

flies and

protozoa Protozoa (: protozoan or protozoon; alternative plural: protozoans) are a polyphyletic group of single-celled eukaryotes, either free-living or parasitic, that feed on organic matter such as other microorganisms or organic debris. Historically ...

were identified in the gut of the calf "Dima". Distortion in the molars is the most common health problem found in woolly mammoth fossils. Sometimes, the replacement was disrupted, and the molars were pushed into abnormal positions, but some animals are known to have survived this. Teeth from Britain showed that 2% of specimens had

periodontal disease Periodontal disease, also known as gum disease, is a set of inflammatory conditions affecting the tissues surrounding the teeth. In its early stage, called gingivitis, the gums become swollen and red and may bleed. It is considered the main c ...

, with half of these containing

caries Tooth decay, also known as caries,The word 'caries' is a mass noun, and is not a plural of 'carie'.'' is the breakdown of teeth due to acids produced by bacteria. The resulting cavities may be a number of different colors, from yellow to black ...

. The teeth sometimes had

cancerous Cancer is a group of diseases involving Cell growth#Disorders, abnormal cell growth with the potential to Invasion (cancer), invade or Metastasis, spread to other parts of the body. These contrast with benign tumors, which do not spread. Po ...

growths.

Distribution and habitat

The habitat of the woolly mammoth is known as "

" or "tundra steppe". This environment stretched across northern Asia, many parts of Europe, and the northern part of North America during the last ice age. It was similar to the grassy

steppes In physical geography, a steppe () is an ecoregion characterized by grassland plains without closed forests except near rivers and lakes. Steppe biomes may include: * the montane grasslands and shrublands biome * the tropical and subtropical gr ...

of modern Russia, but the

flora Flora (: floras or florae) is all the plant life present in a particular region or time, generally the naturally occurring (indigenous (ecology), indigenous) native plant, native plants. The corresponding term for animals is ''fauna'', and for f ...

was more diverse, abundant, and grew faster. Grasses, sedges, shrubs, and herbaceous plants were present, and scattered trees were mainly found in southern regions. This habitat was not dominated by ice and snow, as is popularly believed, since these regions are thought to have been

high-pressure area A high-pressure area, high, or anticyclone, is an area near the surface of a planet where the atmospheric pressure is greater than the pressure in the surrounding regions. Highs are middle-scale meteorological features that result from interpl ...

s at the time. The habitat of the woolly mammoth supported other grazing herbivores such as the

woolly rhinoceros The woolly rhinoceros (''Coelodonta antiquitatis'') is an extinct species of rhinoceros that inhabited northern Eurasia during the Pleistocene epoch. The woolly rhinoceros was a member of the Pleistocene megafauna. The woolly rhinoceros was larg ...

wild horses The wild horse (''Equus ferus'') is a species of the genus ''Equus'', which includes as subspecies the modern domesticated horse (''Equus ferus caballus'') as well as the endangered Przewalski's horse (''Equus ferus przewalskii'', sometimes tr ...

, and

bison A bison (: bison) is a large bovine in the genus ''Bison'' (from Greek, meaning 'wild ox') within the tribe Bovini. Two extant taxon, extant and numerous extinction, extinct species are recognised. Of the two surviving species, the American ...

.Lister, 2007. pp. 88–89 The Altai-Sayan assemblages are the modern

biomes A biome () is a distinct geographical region with specific climate, vegetation, and animal life. It consists of a biological community (ecology), community that has formed in response to its physical environment and regional climate. In 1935, Art ...

most similar to the "mammoth steppe". A 2014 study concluded that

forb A forb or phorb is a herbaceous flowering plant that is not a graminoid (grass, sedge, or rush). The term is used in botany and in vegetation ecology especially in relation to grasslands and understory. Typically, these are eudicots without woo ...

s (a group of herbaceous plants) were more important in the steppe-tundra than previously acknowledged, and that it was a primary food source for the ice-age megafauna. Wooly Mammoths

The southernmost woolly mammoth specimen known is from the

Shandong province Shandong is a coastal province in East China. Shandong has played a major role in Chinese history since the beginning of Chinese civilization along the lower reaches of the Yellow River. It has served as a pivotal cultural and religious center ...

of China and is 33,000 years old. The southernmost European remains are from the Depression of Granada in Spain and are of roughly the same age. DNA studies have helped determine the

phylogeography Phylogeography is the study of the historical processes that may be responsible for the past to present geographic distributions of genealogical lineages. This is accomplished by considering the geographic distribution of individuals in light of ge ...

of the woolly mammoth. A 2008 DNA study showed two distinct groups of woolly mammoths: one that became extinct 45,000 years ago and another one that became extinct 12,000 years ago. The two groups are speculated to be divergent enough to be characterised as

subspecies In Taxonomy (biology), biological classification, subspecies (: subspecies) is a rank below species, used for populations that live in different areas and vary in size, shape, or other physical characteristics (Morphology (biology), morpholog ...

. The group that became extinct earlier stayed in the middle of the high Arctic, while the group with the later extinction had a much wider range. Recent stable isotope studies of Siberian and New World mammoths have shown there were differences in climatic conditions on either side of the

Bering land bridge Beringia is defined today as the land and maritime area bounded on the west by the Lena River in Russia; on the east by the Mackenzie River in Canada; on the north by 72° north latitude in the Chukchi Sea; and on the south by the tip of the ...

(Beringia), with Siberia being more uniformly cold and dry throughout the Late Pleistocene. During the

Younger Dryas The Younger Dryas (YD, Greenland Stadial GS-1) was a period in Earth's geologic history that occurred circa 12,900 to 11,700 years Before Present (BP). It is primarily known for the sudden or "abrupt" cooling in the Northern Hemisphere, when the ...

age, woolly mammoths briefly expanded into north-east Europe, whereafter the mainland populations became extinct. A 2008 genetic study showed that some of the woolly mammoths that entered North America through the Bering land bridge from Asia migrated back about 300,000 years ago and had replaced the previous Asian population by about 40,000 years ago, not long before the entire species became extinct. Fossils of woolly mammoths and Columbian mammoths have been found together in a few localities of North America, including the Hot Springs sinkhole of

South Dakota South Dakota (; Sioux language, Sioux: , ) is a U.S. state, state in the West North Central states, North Central region of the United States. It is also part of the Great Plains. South Dakota is named after the Dakota people, Dakota Sioux ...

where their regions overlapped. It is unknown whether the two species were sympatric and lived there simultaneously, or if the woolly mammoths may have entered these southern areas during times when Columbian mammoth populations were absent there.

Relationship with humans

Modern humans coexisted with woolly mammoths during the

Upper Palaeolithic The Upper Paleolithic (or Upper Palaeolithic) is the third and last subdivision of the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age. Very broadly, it dates to between 50,000 and 12,000 years ago (the beginning of the Holocene), according to some theories ...

period when humans entered Europe from Africa between 30,000 and 40,000 years ago. Before this,

Neanderthals Neanderthals ( ; ''Homo neanderthalensis'' or sometimes ''H. sapiens neanderthalensis'') are an extinction, extinct group of archaic humans who inhabited Europe and Western and Central Asia during the Middle Pleistocene, Middle to Late Plei ...

had coexisted with mammoths during the

Middle Palaeolithic The Middle Paleolithic (or Middle Palaeolithic) is the second subdivision of the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age as it is understood in Europe, Africa and Asia. The term Middle Stone Age is used as an equivalent or a synonym for the Middle P ...

and already used mammoth bones for tool-making and building materials. Woolly mammoths were very important to ice age humans, and human survival may have depended on the mammoth in some areas. Evidence for such coexistence was not recognised until the 19th century.

William Buckland William Buckland Doctor of Divinity, DD, Royal Society, FRS (12 March 1784 – 14 August 1856) was an English theologian, geologist and paleontology, palaeontologist. His work in the early 1820s proved that Kirkdale Cave in North Yorkshire h ...

published his discovery of the

Red Lady of Paviland The Red "Lady" of Paviland () is an Upper Paleolithic partial male skeleton dyed in red ochre and buried in Wales 33,000 BP (approximately 31,000 BCE). The bones were discovered in 1823 by William Buckland in an archaeological dig at Goat's Hol ...

skeleton in 1823, which was found in a cave alongside woolly mammoth bones, but he mistakenly denied that these were contemporaries. In 1864,

Édouard Lartet Édouard Lartet (15 April 180128 January 1871) was a French geologist and paleontologist, and a pioneer of Paleolithic archaeology. He is also known for coining the prehistoric taxon '' Amphicyon'', making it one of the earliest-described fossil ...

found an engraving of a woolly mammoth on a piece of mammoth ivory in the

Abri de la Madeleine The archaeological site Abri de la Madeleine (Magdalene Shelter) is a rock shelter under an overhanging cliff situated near Tursac, in the Dordogne ''département'' of the Aquitaine région of southwestern France. It represents the type site of t ...

cave in

Dordogne Dordogne ( , or ; ; ) is a large rural departments of France, department in south west France, with its Prefectures in France, prefecture in Périgueux. Located in the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region roughly half-way between the Loire Valley and ...

, France. The engraving was the first widely accepted evidence for the coexistence of humans with prehistoric extinct animals and is the first contemporary depiction of such a creature known to modern science. The woolly mammoth is the third-most depicted animal in

ice age art Ice is water that is frozen into a solid state, typically forming at or below temperatures of 0 ° C, 32 ° F, or 273.15 K. It occurs naturally on Earth, on other planets, in Oort cloud objects, and as interstellar ice. As a naturally occur ...

, after horses and bison, and these images were produced between 35,000 and 11,500 years ago. Today, more than 500 depictions of woolly mammoths have been discovered in media ranging from cave paintings and engravings on the walls of 46 caves in Russia, France, and Spain to engravings and sculptures (termed "

portable art Portable art (sometimes called mobiliary art) refers to the small examples of Prehistoric art that could be carried from place to place, which is especially characteristic of the Art of the Upper Palaeolithic and Mesolithic eras. Often made of ivo ...

") made from ivory, antler, stone, and bone. Cave paintings of woolly mammoths exist in several styles and sizes. The French

Rouffignac Cave The Rouffignac cave, in the French commune of Rouffignac-Saint-Cernin-de-Reilhac in the Dordogne département, contains over 250 engravings and cave paintings dating back to the Upper Paleolithic. In conjunction with other caves and abris of the ...

has the most depictions, 159, and some of the drawings are more than in length. Other notable caves with mammoth depictions are the

Chauvet Cave The Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc Cave ( ) in the Ardèche department of southeastern France is a cave that contains some of the best-preserved figurative cave paintings in the world, as well as other evidence of Upper Paleolithic life.Clottes (2003b), p. ...

, Les Combarelles Cave, and

Font-de-Gaume Font-de-Gaume is a cave near Les Eyzies-de-Tayac-Sireuil in the Dordogne department of south-west France. The cave contains prehistoric polychrome cave paintings and engravings dating to the Magdalenian period. Discovered in 1901, more than ...

.Lister, 2007. pp. 118–125 A depiction in the

Cave of El Castillo The Cueva del Castillo contains both a decorated cave and an archaeological site, within the complex of the Caves of Monte Castillo, in Puente Viesgo, Cantabria, Spain. The archaeological stratigraphy has been divided into around 19 layers, ...

may instead show ''Palaeoloxodon'', the "straight-tusked elephant". "Portable art" can be more accurately dated than cave art since it is found in the same deposits as tools and other ice age artifacts. The largest collection of portable mammoth art, consisting of 62 depictions on 47 plaques, was found in the 1960s at an excavated open-air camp near Gönnersdorf in Germany. A correlation between the number of mammoths depicted and the most often hunted species does not seem to exist since reindeer bones are the most frequently found animal remains at the site. Two spear throwers shaped as woolly mammoths have been found in France. Some portable mammoth depictions may not have been produced where they were discovered but could have moved around by ancient trading.

Exploitation

Woolly mammoth bones were used as construction material for dwellings by both Neanderthals and modern humans during the ice age. More than 70 such dwellings are known, mainly from the

East European Plain The East European Plain (also called the Russian Plain, "Extending from eastern Poland through the entire European Russia to the Ural Mountains, the ''East European Plain'' encompasses all of the Baltic states and Belarus, nearly all of Ukraine, ...

. The huts' bases were circular, ranging from . The arrangement of dwellings varied and ranged from apart, depending on location. Large bones were used as foundations for the huts, tusks for the entrances, and the roofs were probably skins held in place by bones or tusks. Some huts had floors that extended below ground. Some of the bones used for materials may have come from mammoths killed by humans, but the state of the bones and the fact that bones used to build a single dwelling varied by several thousands of years in age suggests that they were collected remains of long-dead animals. Woolly mammoth bones were made into various tools, furniture, and musical instruments. Large bones, such as shoulder blades, were used to cover dead human bodies during burial. Woolly mammoth ivory was used to create art objects. Several

Venus figurines A Venus figurine is any Upper Palaeolithic statue portraying a woman, usually carved in the round.Fagan, Brian M., Beck, Charlotte, "Venus Figurines", beliefs '' The Oxford Companion to Archaeology'', 1996, Oxford University Press, pp. 740– ...

, including the

Venus of Brassempouy The Venus of Brassempouy (French: ''la Dame de Brassempouy'', , meaning "Lady of Brassempouy", or ''Dame à la Capuche'', "Lady with the Hood") is a fragmentary ivory figurine from the Upper Palaeolithic, apparently broken from a larger figure at ...

and the

Venus of Lespugue The Venus of Lespugue is a Venus figurine, a statuette of a female figure of the Gravettian, dated to between 26,000 and 24,000 years ago. Discovery It was discovered in 1922 in the Rideaux cave of Lespugue (Haute-Garonne) in the foothills of ...

, were made from this material. Weapons made from ivory, such as daggers, spears, and a

boomerang A boomerang () is a thrown tool typically constructed with airfoil sections and designed to spin about an axis perpendicular to the direction of its flight, designed to return to the thrower. The origin of the word is from Australian Aborigin ...

, are known. A 2019 study found that woolly mammoth ivory was the most suitable bony material for producing big game projectile points during the Late Pleistocene. To process the ivory, the large tusks had to be chopped, chiseled, and split into smaller, more manageable pieces. Some ivory artifacts show that tusks had been straightened, and how this was achieved is unknown. Woolly mammoths were an important food source for both modern humans and Neanderthals. Several woolly mammoth specimens show evidence of being butchered by humans, which is indicated by breaks, cut marks, and associated stone tools. How much prehistoric humans relied on woolly mammoth meat is unknown since many other large herbivores were available. Many mammoth carcasses may have been scavenged by humans rather than hunted. Some cave paintings show woolly mammoths in structures interpreted as pitfall traps. Few specimens show direct, unambiguous evidence of having been hunted by humans. A Siberian specimen with a spearhead embedded in its shoulder blade shows that a spear had been thrown at it with great force. At a site in southern Poland that contains bones from over 100 mammoths, stone spear tips have been found embedded in bones, and many stone spear points in the site were damaged from impact against mammoth bones, indicating that mammoths were the major prey for people at the time. A specimen from the

Mousterian The Mousterian (or Mode III) is an Industry (archaeology), archaeological industry of Lithic technology, stone tools, associated primarily with the Neanderthals in Europe, and with the earliest anatomically modern humans in North Africa and We ...

age of Italy shows evidence of spear hunting by Neanderthals. The juvenile specimen nicknamed "Yuka" is the first frozen mammoth with evidence of human interaction. It shows evidence of having been killed by a large predator and scavenged by humans shortly after. Some of its bones had been removed and were found nearby. A site near the

Yana River The Yana ( rus, Я́на, p=ˈjanə; ) is a river in Sakha in Russia, located between the Lena to the west and the Indigirka to the east. Course It is long, and its drainage basin covers . Including its longest source river, the Sartang, i ...

in Siberia has revealed several specimens with evidence of human hunting, but the finds were interpreted to show that the animals were not hunted intensively, but perhaps mainly when ivory was needed. Two woolly mammoths from

Wisconsin Wisconsin ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Great Lakes region, Great Lakes region of the Upper Midwest of the United States. It borders Minnesota to the west, Iowa to the southwest, Illinois to the south, Lake Michigan to the east, Michig ...

, the "Schaefer" and "Hebior mammoths", show evidence of having been butchered by

Paleo-Indians Paleo-Indians were the first peoples who entered and subsequently inhabited the Americas towards the end of the Late Pleistocene period. The prefix ''paleo-'' comes from . The term ''Paleo-Indians'' applies specifically to the lithic period in ...

Extinction

Most woolly mammoth populations disappeared during the late Pleistocene and mid-

, coinciding with the extinction of most North American

Pleistocene megafauna The Late Pleistocene to the beginning of the Holocene saw the extinction of the majority of the world's megafauna, typically defined as animal species having body masses over , which resulted in a collapse in faunal density and diversity acro ...

(including the Columbian mammoth) as well as the extinctions or extirpations of steppe-associated fauna of Eurasia that coexisted with the mammoth species (such as the woolly rhinoceros, the cave lion, reindeer,

saiga The saiga antelope (, ''Saiga tatarica''), or saiga, is a species of antelope which during antiquity inhabited a vast area of the Eurasian steppe, spanning the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains in the northwest and Caucasus in the southwes ...

, the

Arctic fox The Arctic fox (''Vulpes lagopus''), also known as the white fox, polar fox, or snow fox, is a small species of fox native to the Arctic regions of the Northern Hemisphere and common throughout the Tundra#Arctic tundra, Arctic tundra biome. I ...

, and the steppe lemming). This extinction formed part of the

Late Pleistocene extinctions The Late Pleistocene to the beginning of the Holocene saw the extinction of the majority of the world's megafauna, typically defined as animal species having body masses over , which resulted in a collapse in faunal density and diversity acro ...

, which began 40,000 years ago and peaked between 14,000 and 11,500 years ago. Scientists are divided over whether hunting or climate change, which led to the shrinkage of its habitat, was the main factor that contributed to the extinction of the woolly mammoth, or whether it was due to a combination of the two. Evidence from tusk-derived ''δ''¹⁸O values suggests that climate change was not the direct cause of Eurasian woolly mammoths, as ''δ''¹⁸O did not significantly vary in areas where woolly mammoths died out and where they persisted for longer into the Holocene. Projectile points made from mammoth ivory

Projectile points made from mammoth ivory

Whatever the cause, large mammals are generally more vulnerable than smaller ones due to their smaller population size and low reproduction rates.Lister, 2007. pp. 146–148 Climatic patterns during the

Last Interglacial The Last Interglacial, also known as the Eemian, was the interglacial period which began about 130,000 years ago at the end of the Penultimate Glacial Period and ended about 115,000 years ago at the beginning of the Last Glacial Period. It cor ...

(130–116 kyr BP) suggest that woolly mammoths and associated steppe faunas were sensitive to contractions of steppe-tundra habitats since they were adapted to cold, dry, and open environments. Genetic results and climatic models both indicate that habitats suitable for the woolly mammoth in Eurasia contracted during the interglacial period, which would have caused population bottleneck effects that restricted its range to a few northern areas. As the climate favoured colder environments, however, woolly mammoth populations rebounded during later glacial periods. The Last Glacial Period of the late Pleistocene is considered that of the maximum geographic distribution of the woolly mammoth, occupying most of Europe, northern Asia, and northern North America, although several barriers such as ice sheets, high mountain chains, deserts, year-round water surfaces, and other grasslands prevented them from spreading farther. Towards the end of the Last Glacial period, from around 15,000 years ago, the mammoth steppe that the woolly mammoth inhabited was gradually replaced across most of Siberia with wet tundra and boreal and temperate forest, which the woolly mammoth would have found to be unfavourable habitat. Different woolly mammoth populations did not die out simultaneously across their range, but gradually became extinct over time. The dynamics of different woolly mammoth populations varied as they experienced very different magnitudes of climatic and human impacts over time, suggesting that extinction causes would have varied by population. Most populations disappeared between 14,000 and 10,000 years ago. In Britain, woolly mammoths were still present between 14,500 and 14,000 BP. The youngest fossils of the mainland population are from the

Kyttyk Peninsula The Kyttyk Peninsula, commonly known as Kyttyk (), is a peninsula on the northern coast of Chukotka Autonomous Okrug, washed by the East Siberian Sea. The northernmost point of the peninsula is Cape Peschany. The territory of the peninsula consi ...

of Siberia and date to 9,650 years ago. A small population of woolly mammoths survived on St. Paul Island, Alaska, well into the Holocene, with their extinction on the island being tightly constrained to around 5,600 years ago based on direct dating of bones and environmental proxies. This population is suggested to have gone extinct as a result of sea-level rise and increasing dryness of the island reducing freshwater availability, along with mammoth activity degrading the few freshwater sources on the island. The last population known from fossils remained on

in the

Arctic Ocean The Arctic Ocean is the smallest and shallowest of the world's five oceanic divisions. It spans an area of approximately and is the coldest of the world's oceans. The International Hydrographic Organization (IHO) recognizes it as an ocean, ...

until 4,000 years ago, well into the start of human

civilization A civilization (also spelled civilisation in British English) is any complex society characterized by the development of state (polity), the state, social stratification, urban area, urbanization, and symbolic systems of communication beyon ...

and several centuries subsequent to the construction of the

Great Pyramid The Great Pyramid of Giza is the largest Egyptian pyramid. It served as the tomb of pharaoh Khufu, who ruled during the Fourth Dynasty of the Old Kingdom. Built , over a period of about 26 years, the pyramid is the oldest of the Seven Wond ...

and

Sphinx A sphinx ( ; , ; or sphinges ) is a mythical creature with the head of a human, the body of a lion, and the wings of an eagle. In Culture of Greece, Greek tradition, the sphinx is a treacherous and merciless being with the head of a woman, th ...

ancient Egypt Ancient Egypt () was a cradle of civilization concentrated along the lower reaches of the Nile River in Northeast Africa. It emerged from prehistoric Egypt around 3150BC (according to conventional Egyptian chronology), when Upper and Lower E ...

. However some studies have asserted that

environmental DNA Environmental DNA or eDNA is DNA that is collected from a variety of environmental samples such as soil, seawater, snow or air, rather than directly sampled from an individual organism. As various organisms interact with the environment, DNA ...

supports the existence of small mainland populations that died out at around the same time as their island counterparts; two studies in 2021 found that based on environmental DNA, mammoths survived in the

Yukon Yukon () is a Provinces and territories of Canada, territory of Canada, bordering British Columbia to the south, the Northwest Territories to the east, the Beaufort Sea to the north, and the U.S. state of Alaska to the west. It is Canada’s we ...

until about 5,700 years ago, roughly concurrent with the St. Paul population and on the

Taymyr Peninsula The Taymyr Peninsula ( ) is a peninsula in the Far North of Russia, in the Siberian Federal District, that forms the northernmost part of the mainland of Eurasia. Administratively it is part of the Krasnoyarsk Krai Federal subject of Russia. Ge ...

of Siberia until 3,900 to 4,100 years ago, roughly concurrent with the Wrangel population. The Taymyr Peninsula, with its drier habitat, may have served as a refugium for the mammoth steppe, supporting mammoths and other widespread Ice Age mammals such as wild horses ('' Equus'' sp.). However, ancient environmental DNA in cold environments can be reworked from older sediments into younger sediments that clearly post-date extinction, raising doubt about validity of these dates. DNA sequencing of remains of two mammoths, one from Siberia 44,800 years BP and one from Wrangel Island 4,300 years BP, indicates two major population crashes: one around 280,000 years ago, from which the population recovered, and a second about 12,000 years ago, near the ice age's end, from which it did not. The Wrangel Island mammoths were isolated for 5,000 years by rising post-ice-age sea level, and resultant inbreeding in their small population of about 300 to 1,000 individuals led to a 20% to 30% loss of heterozygosity and a 65% loss in mitochondrial DNA diversity. The population seems to have subsequently been stable, without suffering further significant loss of genetic diversity. Genetic evidence thus implies the extinction of this final population was sudden, rather than the culmination of a gradual decline. Before their extinction, the Wrangel Island mammoths had accumulated numerous genetic defects due to their small population; in particular, a number of genes for olfactory receptors and urinary proteins became nonfunctional, possibly because they had lost their selective value on the island environment. It is not clear whether these genetic changes contributed to their extinction. It has been proposed that these changes are consistent with the concept of genomic meltdown, however, this has been contested by later analysis of the genomes of some of the last mammoths on Wrangel Island, which suggests that highly deleterious mutations had been significantly purged to levels lower than that in mainland populations, though the level of moderately deleterious mutations was elevated. The sudden disappearance of an apparently stable population may be more consistent with a catastrophic event, possibly related to climate (such as icing of the snowpack), disease, or a human hunting expedition. The disappearance is relatively close in time with the first evidence of humans on the island, though other authors have suggested that woolly mammoths were almost certainly extinct for several centuries prior to the presence of humans on Wrangel Island (which dates to around 3,600 years ago). The woolly mammoths of eastern Beringia (modern

Alaska Alaska ( ) is a non-contiguous U.S. state on the northwest extremity of North America. Part of the Western United States region, it is one of the two non-contiguous U.S. states, alongside Hawaii. Alaska is also considered to be the north ...

and

) had similarly died out about 13,300 years ago, soon (roughly 1,000 years) after the first appearance of humans in the area, which parallels the fate of all the other late Pleistocene proboscideans (mammoths,

gomphothere Gomphotheres are an extinct group of proboscideans related to modern elephants. First appearing in Africa during the Oligocene, they dispersed into Eurasia and North America during the Miocene and arrived in South America during the Pleistocene a ...

s, and mastodons), as well as most of the rest of the

megafauna In zoology, megafauna (from Ancient Greek, Greek μέγας ''megas'' "large" and Neo-Latin ''fauna'' "animal life") are large animals. The precise definition of the term varies widely, though a common threshold is approximately , this lower en ...

, of the

Americas The Americas, sometimes collectively called America, are a landmass comprising the totality of North America and South America.''Webster's New World College Dictionary'', 2010 by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Cleveland, Ohio. When viewed as a sing ...

. In contrast, the St. Paul Island mammoth population apparently died out significantly before human arrival. Changes in climate shrank suitable mammoth habitat from 42,000 years ago to , a roughly 90% decrease, by 6,000 years ago. Woolly mammoths survived an even greater loss of habitat at the end of the

Penultimate Glacial Period The Penultimate Glacial Period (PGP) is the glacial period that occurred before the Last Glacial Period. The penultimate glacial period is officially unnamed just like the Last Glacial Period. The PGP lasted from ~194,000 years ago at the end of ...

and the onset of the Last Interglacial, approximately 125,000 years ago. Studies of an 11,300–11,000-year-old

trackway Historic roads (or historic trails in the US and Canada) are paths or routes that have historical importance due to their use over a period of time. Examples exist from prehistoric times until the early 20th century. They include ancient track ...

in south-western Canada showed that ''M. primigenius'' was in decline while coexisting with humans, since far fewer tracks of juveniles were identified than would be expected in a normal herd. It has been suggested that human hunting exerted significant pressure on woolly mammoth populations for thousands of years across their range, making the population abundance of woolly mammoths considerably lower than it would have been otherwise even prior to their range decline, and likely hastened the range collapse of woolly mammoths in response to climate change.

Revival efforts

The existence of preserved soft tissue remains and DNA of woolly mammoths has led to the idea that the species could be resurrected by scientific means. Several methods have been proposed to achieve this.

Cloning Cloning is the process of producing individual organisms with identical genomes, either by natural or artificial means. In nature, some organisms produce clones through asexual reproduction; this reproduction of an organism by itself without ...

would involve removal of the DNA-containing

nucleus Nucleus (: nuclei) is a Latin word for the seed inside a fruit. It most often refers to: *Atomic nucleus, the very dense central region of an atom *Cell nucleus, a central organelle of a eukaryotic cell, containing most of the cell's DNA Nucleu ...

of the

egg cell The egg cell or ovum (: ova) is the female Reproduction, reproductive cell, or gamete, in most anisogamous organisms (organisms that reproduce sexually with a larger, female gamete and a smaller, male one). The term is used when the female game ...

of a female elephant and replacement with a nucleus from woolly mammoth tissue. The cell would then be stimulated into dividing and inserted back into a female elephant. The resulting calf would have the genes of the woolly mammoth, although its fetal environment would be different. Most intact mammoths have had little usable DNA because of their conditions of preservation. There is not enough to guide the production of an embryo.Lister, 2007. pp. 42–43 A second method involves

artificially inseminating Artificial insemination is the deliberate introduction of sperm into a female's cervix or uterus, uterine cavity for the purpose of achieving a pregnancy through in vivo fertilization by means other than sexual intercourse. It is a assisted repro ...

an elephant egg cell with

sperm Sperm (: sperm or sperms) is the male reproductive Cell (biology), cell, or gamete, in anisogamous forms of sexual reproduction (forms in which there is a larger, female reproductive cell and a smaller, male one). Animals produce motile sperm ...

cells from a frozen woolly mammoth carcass. The resulting offspring would be an elephant–mammoth hybrid, and the process would have to be repeated so more hybrids could be used in breeding. After several generations of cross-breeding these hybrids, an almost pure woolly mammoth would be produced. The fact that sperm cells of modern mammals are viable for 15 years at most after deepfreezing makes this method unfeasible. Several projects are working on gradually replacing the genes in elephant cells with mammoth genes.The Long Now Foundation – Revive and Restore
. By 2015 and using the new

CRISPR CRISPR (; acronym of clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats) is a family of DNA sequences found in the genomes of prokaryotic organisms such as bacteria and archaea. Each sequence within an individual prokaryotic CRISPR is d ...

DNA editing technique, one team, led by George Church, had some woolly mammoth genes edited into the genome of an Asian elephant; focusing on cold-resistance initially, the target genes are for the external ear size, subcutaneous fat,

hemoglobin Hemoglobin (haemoglobin, Hb or Hgb) is a protein containing iron that facilitates the transportation of oxygen in red blood cells. Almost all vertebrates contain hemoglobin, with the sole exception of the fish family Channichthyidae. Hemoglobin ...

, and hair attributes. If any method is ever successful, a suggestion has been made to introduce the hybrids to a wildlife reserve in Siberia called the Pleistocene Park. Some researchers question the ethics of such recreation attempts. In addition to the technical problems, not much habitat is left that would be suitable for elephant-mammoth hybrids. Because the species was social and

gregarious Sociality is the degree to which individuals in an animal population tend to associate in social groups (gregariousness) and form cooperative societies. Sociality is a survival response to evolutionary pressures. For example, when a mother was ...

, creating a few specimens would not be ideal. The time and resources required would be enormous, and the scientific benefits would be unclear, suggesting these resources should instead be used to preserve extant elephant species which are endangered. The ethics of using elephants as surrogate mothers in hybridisation attempts has been questioned, as most embryos would not survive, and knowing the exact needs of a hybrid elephant–mammoth calf would be impossible. Another concern is the introduction of unknown pathogens if de-extinction efforts were to succeed. In 2021, an Austin-based company raised funds to reintroduce the species in the

Arctic tundra In physical geography, a tundra () is a type of biome where tree growth is hindered by frigid temperatures and short growing seasons. There are three regions and associated types of tundra: Arctic, Alpine, and Antarctic. Tundra vegetation is ...

Fossil specimens

Woolly mammoth fossils have been found in many different types of deposits, including former rivers and lakes, and in "

Doggerland Doggerland was a large area of land in Northern Europe, now submerged beneath the southern North Sea. This region was repeatedly exposed at various times during the Pleistocene epoch due to the lowering of sea levels during glacial periods. Howe ...

" in the

North Sea The North Sea lies between Great Britain, Denmark, Norway, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, and France. A sea on the European continental shelf, it connects to the Atlantic Ocean through the English Channel in the south and the Norwegian Se ...

, which was dry at times during the ice age. Such fossils are usually fragmentary and contain no soft tissue. Accumulations of modern elephant remains have been termed "elephants' graveyards", as these sites were erroneously thought to be where old elephants went to die. Similar accumulations of woolly mammoth bones have been found; these are thought to be the result of individuals dying near or in the rivers over thousands of years, and their bones eventually being brought together by the streams. Some accumulations are thought to be the remains of herds that died together at the same time, perhaps due to flooding. Natural traps, such as kettle holes, sink holes, and mud, have trapped mammoths in separate events over time. Apart from frozen remains, the only soft tissue known is from a specimen that was preserved in a petroleum seep in Starunia, Poland. Frozen remains of woolly mammoths have been found in the northern parts of Siberia and Alaska, with far fewer finds in the latter. Such remains are mostly found above the Arctic Circle, in permafrost. Soft tissue apparently was less likely to be preserved between 30,000 and 15,000 years ago, perhaps because the climate was milder during that period. Most specimens have partially degraded before discovery, due to exposure or to being scavenged. This "natural mummification" required the animal to have been buried rapidly in liquid or semisolids such as silt, mud, and icy water, which then froze.Lister, 2007. pp. 50–53 The presence of undigested food in the stomach and seed pods still in the mouth of many of the specimens suggests neither starvation nor exposure is likely. The maturity of this ingested vegetation places the time of death in autumn rather than in spring, when flowers would be expected. The animals may have fallen through ice into small ponds or potholes, entombing them. Many are certainly known to have been killed in rivers, perhaps through being swept away by floods. In one location, by the Byoryolyokh River in Sakha Republic, Yakutia in Siberia, more than 8,000 bones from at least 140 mammoths have been found in a single spot, apparently having been swept there by the current.

Frozen specimens

Between 1692 and 1806, a handful of reports of frozen mammoth remains with soft tissue were published reached Europe, though none were collected during that time. While frozen woolly mammoth carcasses had been excavated by Europeans as early as 1728, the first fully documented specimen was discovered near the delta of the Lena River in 1799 by Ossip Schumachov, a Siberian hunter. While in Yakutsk in 1806, Johann Friedrich Adam, Michael Friedrich Adams heard about the frozen mammoth. Adams recovered the entire skeleton, apart from the tusks, which Shumachov had already sold, and one foreleg, most of the skin, and nearly of hair. During his return voyage, he purchased a pair of tusks that he believed were the ones that Shumachov had sold. Adams brought all to the Zoological Museum of the Zoological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and the task of mounting the skeleton was given to Wilhelm Gottlieb Tilesius von Tilenau, Wilhelm Gottlieb Tilesius. This was one of the first attempts at reconstructing the skeleton of an extinct animal. Most of the reconstruction is correct, but Tilesius placed each tusk in the opposite socket, so that they curved outward instead of inward. The error was not corrected until 1899, and the correct placement of mammoth tusks was still a matter of debate into the 20th century. The 1901 excavation of the "Berezovka mammoth" is the best documented of the early finds. It was discovered at the Siberian Berezovka River (after a dog had noticed its smell), and the Russian authorities financed its excavation. The entire expedition took 10 months, and the specimen had to be cut to pieces before it could be transported to St. Petersburg. Most of the skin on the head as well as the trunk had been scavenged by predators, and most of the internal organs had rotted away. It was identified as a 35- to 40-year-old male, which had died 35,000 years ago. The animal still had grass between its teeth and on the tongue, showing that it had died suddenly. One of its shoulder blades was broken, which may have happened when it fell into a crevasse. It may have died of asphyxiation, as indicated by its erect penis. One third of a replica of the mammoth in the Museum of Zoology of Saint Petersburg, St. Petersburg is covered in skin and hair of the "Berezovka mammoth". By 1929, the remains of 34 mammoths with frozen soft tissues (skin, flesh, or organs) had been documented. Only four of them were relatively complete. Since then, about that many more have been found. In most cases, the flesh showed signs of decay before its freezing and later desiccation. Since 1860, Russian authorities have offered rewards of up to for finds of frozen woolly mammoth carcasses. Often, such finds were kept secret due to superstition. Several carcasses have been lost because they were not reported, and one was fed to dogs. Despite the rewards, native Yakuts were also reluctant to report mammoth finds to the authorities due to bad treatment of them in the past. In more recent years, scientific expeditions have been devoted to finding carcasses instead of relying solely on chance encounters. The most famous frozen specimen from Alaska is a calf nicknamed "Effie", which was found in 1948. It consists of the head, the trunk, and a foreleg and is about 25,000 years old.Lister, 2007. pp. 45–75 In 1977, the well-preserved carcass of a seven- to eight-month-old woolly mammoth calf named "Dima" was discovered. This carcass was recovered near a tributary of the Kolyma River in northeastern Siberia. This specimen weighed about at death and was high and long. Radiocarbon dating determined that "Dima" died about 40,000 years ago. Its internal organs are similar to those of modern elephants, but its ears are only one-tenth the size of those of an African elephant of similar age. A less complete juvenile, nicknamed "Mascha", was found on the Yamal Peninsula in 1988. It was 3–4 months old, and a laceration on its right foot may have been the cause of death. It is the westernmost frozen mammoth found. In 1997, a piece of mammoth tusk was discovered protruding from the tundra of the

in Siberia, Russia. In 1999, this 20,380-year-old carcass and 25 tons of surrounding sediment were transported by an Mil Mi-26, Mi-26 heavy lift helicopter to an ice cave in Khatanga, Russia, Khatanga. The specimen was nicknamed the "Jarkov Mammoth, Jarkov mammoth". In October 2000, the careful defrosting operations in this cave began with the use of hair dryers to keep the hair and other soft tissues intact. In 2002, a well-preserved carcass was discovered near the Maxunuokha River in northern Yakutia, which was recovered during three excavations. This adult male specimen was called the "Yukagir mammoth" and is estimated to have lived around 18,560 years ago, been tall at the shoulder, and weighed between 4 and 5 tonnes. It is one of the best-preserved mammoths ever found due to the almost complete head, covered in skin, but without the trunk. Some postcranial remains were found, some with soft tissue. In 2007, the carcass of a female calf nicknamed "Lyuba" was discovered near the Yuribey Bridge, Yuribey River, where it had been buried for 41,800 years. By cutting a section through a molar and analysing its growth lines, they found that the animal had died at the age of one month. The mummified calf weighed , was high and in length. At the time of discovery, its eyes and trunk were intact and some fur remained on its body. Its organs and skin are very well preserved. "Lyuba" is believed to have been suffocated by mud in a river that its herd was crossing. After death, its body may have been colonised by bacteria that produce lactic acid, which "pickled" it, preserving the mammoth in a nearly pristine state. In 2010, a juvenile nicknamed it "

" was found in Siberia, the first known adolescent female, estimated to have been 2.5 years. It had man-made cut marks, and its skull and pelvis had been removed prior to discovery, but were found nearby. After being discovered, the skin of "Yuka" was prepared to produce a taxidermy mount. In 2019, a group of researchers managed to obtain signs of biological activity after transferring nuclei of "Yuka" into mouse oocytes. In 2013, a well-preserved carcass was found on Maly Lyakhovsky Island, one of the islands in the New Siberian Islands archipelago, a female between 50 and 60 years old at the time of death. The carcass contained well-preserved muscular tissue. When it was extracted from the ice, liquid blood spilled from the abdominal cavity. The finders interpreted this as indicating woolly mammoth blood possessed antifreezing properties. In 2022, a complete female baby woolly mammoth was found by a miner in the Klondike, Yukon, Klondike gold fields of

, Canada. The specimen is estimated to have died 30,000 years ago and was nicknamed "Nun cho ga", meaning "big baby animal" in the local Hän language. It is the best preserved woolly mammoth mummy found in North America, and was the same size as Lyuba. In 2025, a 50,000-year-old frozen calf nicknamed "Yana", after the Yana River basin of Yakutia where it was found, was announced. It was found by local residents and was described as the "best preserved" mammoth carcass, since it was found before it could be eaten by animals.

Cultural significance

The woolly mammoth has remained culturally significant long after its extinction. Indigenous peoples of Siberia had long found what is now known to have been woolly mammoth remains, collecting their tusks for the ivory trade, and had a diverse range of mythological interpretations of mammoth remains. The Mansi people, Mansi and the Khanty peoples conceived of mammoths as giant birds, with the Mansi (along with the Nenets) believing that they were responsible for the creation of mountains and lakes. In the mythology of the Evenks, Evenk people, mammoths were responsible for the world's creation, digging up the land from the ocean floor with their tusks. The Selkup people, Selkup believed that mammoths lived underground and guarded the underworld, while the Yakuts regarded mammoths as water spirits. The indigenous peoples of North America used woolly mammoth ivory and bone for tools and art. As in Siberia, North American natives had "myths of observation" explaining the remains of woolly mammoths and other elephants; the Bering Strait Inupiat believed the bones came from burrowing creatures, while other peoples associated them with primordial giants or "great beasts". Observers have interpreted legends from several Native American peoples as containing folk memory of extinct elephants, though other scholars are skeptical that folk memory could survive such a long time. Woolly mammoth tusks had been articles of trade in Asia long before Europeans became acquainted with them. Güyük, the 13th-century Khan of the Mongols, is reputed to have sat on a throne made from mammoth ivory. Inspired by the Siberian natives' concept of the mammoth as an underground creature, it was recorded in the 16th-century Chinese pharmaceutical encyclopedia, ''Ben Cao Gangmu'', as ''yin shu'', "the hidden rodent". Remains of various extinct elephants were known by Europeans for centuries but were generally interpreted as the remains of legendary creatures such as behemoths or Giant (mythology), giants, based on bible, biblical accounts. They were thought to be remains of modern elephants that had been brought to Europe during the Roman Republic, for example the war elephants of Hannibal and Pyrrhus of Epirus, or animals that had wandered north. Siberian mammoth ivory is reported to have been exported to Russia and Europe in the 10th century. The first Siberian ivory to reach Western Europe was brought to London in 1611. When Russia occupied Siberia, the ivory trade grew and it became a widely exported commodity, with huge amounts being excavated. From the 19th century onwards, woolly mammoth ivory became a highly prized commodity, used as raw material for many products. Today, it is still in great demand as a replacement for the now-banned export of elephant ivory and has been referred to as "white gold".Lister, 2007. pp. 137–139 Local dealers estimate that 10 million mammoths are still frozen in Siberia. Conservationists have proposed that these mammoths could help prevent the extinction of living elephant species. Elephants are often hunted by poachers for their ivory, but if the demand for ivory could be met by sourcing it from the already extinct mammoths, it might reduce the pressure on elephants. Trade in elephant ivory has been forbidden in most places following the 1989 Lausanne Conference, but dealers have been known to label it as mammoth ivory to get it through customs. Mammoth ivory looks similar to elephant ivory, but the former is browner, and the Schreger lines are coarser in texture. In the 21st century, global warming has made access to Siberian tusks easier since the permafrost thaws more quickly, exposing the mammoths embedded within it. Stories abound about frozen woolly mammoth meat consumed once defrosted, especially that of the "Berezovka mammoth", but most of these are considered dubious. In most cases, the carcasses were decayed, and the stench so unbearable that only wild scavengers and the dogs accompanying the finders showed any interest in the flesh. Such meat apparently was once recommended against illness in China, and Siberian natives have occasionally cooked the meat of frozen carcasses they discovered. According to one of the more famous stories, members of the The Explorers Club, Explorers Club dined on the meat of a frozen mammoth from Alaska in 1951. In 2016, a group of researchers genetically examined a sample of the meal and found it to belong to a green sea turtle (it had also been claimed to belong to ''Megatherium''). The researchers concluded that the dinner had been a publicity stunt. In 2011, the Chinese palaeontologist Lida Xing livestreamed while eating meat from a Siberian mammoth leg (thoroughly cooked and flavoured with salt) and told his audience it tasted bad and like soil. This triggered controversy and gained mixed reactions, but Xing stated he did it to promote science. In 2023, An Australian cultured meat start-up, Vow, revealed a lab-grown "mammoth meatball" produced using a DNA sequence from the woolly mammoth. The meatball sparked conversations about the potential of cultured meat as a sustainable food source, highlighting its environmental benefits compared to traditional agriculture.

Alleged survival

There have been occasional claims that the woolly mammoth is not extinct and that small, isolated herds might survive in the vast and sparsely inhabited tundra of the Northern Hemisphere. In the 19th century, several reports of "large shaggy beasts" were passed on to the Russian authorities by Siberian tribesmen, but no scientific proof ever surfaced. A French ''chargé d'affaires ''working in Vladivostok, M. Gallon, said in 1946 that in 1920, he had met a Russian fur-trapper who claimed to have seen living giant, furry "elephants" deep into the taiga. Due to the large area of Siberia, the possibility that woolly mammoths survived into more recent times cannot be completely ruled out, but evidence indicates that they became extinct thousands of years ago. These natives had likely gained their knowledge of woolly mammoths from carcasses they encountered, which is likely the source of their legends of the animal. In the late 19th century, rumours existed about surviving mammoths in Alaska. In 1899, Henry Tukeman detailed his killing of a mammoth in Alaska and his subsequent donation of the specimen to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC. The museum denied the story. The Swedish writer Bengt Sjögren suggested in 1962 that the myth began when the American biologist Charles Haskins Townsend travelled in Alaska, saw Inuit trading mammoth tusks, asked if mammoths were still living in Alaska, and provided them with a drawing of the animal. Bernard Heuvelmans included the possibility of residual populations of Siberian mammoths in his 1955 book, ''On The Track Of Unknown Animals''; while his book was a systematic investigation into possible unknown species, it became the basis of the cryptozoology movement.

References

Bibliography

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External links

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Natural History Museum: "The last of the mammoths"
– three-minute video about the extinction of the woolly mammoth, presented by Adrian Lister
National Geographic: "Mammoth tusk treasure hunt"
– two-minute video about mammoth tusk collecting in modern Siberia {{DEFAULTSORT:Woolly Mammoth Mammoths Pleistocene proboscideans Pleistocene first appearances Pleistocene mammals of North America Fauna of the Holarctic realm Holocene extinctions Extinct animals of Asia Extinct animals of the United States Extinct animals of Canada Extinct mammals of Europe Extinct mammals of North America Fossil taxa described in 1799 Cenozoic animals of North America Taxa named by Johann Friedrich Blumenbach Symbols of Alaska Symbols of Vermont Taxa with lost type specimens Species that are or were threatened by climate change Species that are or were threatened by human consumption